William James (1842–1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. He is considered one of America’s most prominent philosophers and one of the great psychologists of all time. He was the brother of the author Henry James.
Born in New York City, James studied art and then got a medical degree from Harvard. He never practiced as a doctor—instead, he established himself as a member of the Harvard faculty teaching anatomy and physiology, and later psychology and philosophy. In 1872, James together with Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Chauncey Wright, and other Harvard intellectuals from the law, medicine, philosophy, and other academic disciplines started a philosophical discussion group called the Metaphysical Club.
James’s most significant contribution to philosophy is the idea of pragmatism—it purported that knowledge is only meaningful when coupled with action. In other words, the practical outcome of an idea is more valuable than the idea itself. James sought a functional definition of truth and described truth as not an abstract idea. The truth of a proposition can be judged only by practical, concrete results; James said, “The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite assignable reasons.”
In psychology, James is credited with introducing the concept of the “stream of consciousness” to describe how an individual’s perceptions, thoughts, memories, sensations, and reactions to events are perceived as a continuous flow. James wrote, “Consciousness … does not appear to itself chopped up in bits … a ‘river’ or ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described.”
James’s most famous works are The Principles of Psychology (1890) and Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902.) The latter laid the foundation of the study of the psychology of religion; it influenced various intellectuals—-from the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung to the novelist Aldous Huxley. Varieties of Religious Experience has been hailed as one of the best non-fiction books of the twentieth century.
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Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.
—William James
Topics: Act, Cheerfulness
Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.
—William James
Topics: Thinking
We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.
—William James
Topics: Anger
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
—William James
Topics: Action
Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
—William James
Topics: Thought, Thoughts, Thinking
Act as though what you do makes a difference. It does.
—William James
Topics: Kindness, Helping, Action, Doing Your Best, Act
The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
—William James
Topics: Worry
The most violent revolutions in an individuals beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and ones own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity.
—William James
The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
—William James
Topics: Genius
Most men’s friendships are too inarticulate.
—William James
Topics: Friendship
Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world’s demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results.
—William James
Topics: Failure
The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
—William James
Topics: Truth
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
—William James
Topics: Work, Procrastination
To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
—William James
Topics: Psychiatry
How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
—William James
Topics: Age, Aging
With mere good intentions hell is Proverbially paved.
—William James
Topics: Procrastination, Getting Going, Inaction
Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
—William James
Topics: Success
The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can be more base and unworthy than the pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills it may have been engendered? What is more injurious to others? What less helpful as a way out of the difficulty? It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble which occasioned it, and increases the total evil of the situation. At all costs, then, we ought to reduce the sway of that mood; we ought to scout it in ourselves and others, and never show it tolerance.
—William James
Topics: Unhappiness, Sadness
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
—William James
Topics: Truth, Persuasion
The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
—William James
Topics: Facts
A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
—William James
Topics: Communism, Socialism
If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.
—William James
Topics: Miracles
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With good intentions, hell proverbially is paved.
—William James
Topics: Character
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.
—William James
Topics: Habit, Decisions, Decision, Indecision
We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
—William James
Topics: Nature, Life
Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.
—William James
Topics: Nature, Life
The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.
—William James
Topics: Hell, Character
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
—William James
Topics: Realization, Acceptance, Awareness, One liners, Appreciation, Gratitude
We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.
—William James
Topics: Society
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult undertaking which, more than anything else, will determine its successful outcome.
—William James
Topics: Attitude, Beginnings, Success
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
—William James
Topics: Change, Truth
To kill time is not murder, it’s suicide.
—William James
I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.
—William James
Topics: Singing
The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but, whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
—William James
Topics: Manners
Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer’s inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its string can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it…
—William James
Topics: Bravery
The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.
—William James
Topics: Growth, Men
The emotions are not always subject to reason … but they are always subject to action. When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
—William James
Topics: Secrets of Success
Whenever two people meet there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.
—William James
Topics: Teamwork, Potential, Teams, Possibilities
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.
—William James
Topics: Character, Opportunity
Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
—William James
Topics: Adversity, Fortune, Acceptance, Misfortunes
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