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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With mere good intentions hell is Proverbially paved.
—William James
Topics: Inaction, Getting Going, Procrastination
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
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
From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreignness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy (a benevolent Universe) means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust.
—William James
Topics: The Universe
Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, “This is the real me,” and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
—William James
Topics: Attitude, Live, Follow, Being Ourselves
Everyone knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call fourth. … Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. … Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives fare within his limits he possesses powers of various sorts he habitually fails to use.
—William James
Topics: Doing Your Best, Potential, Possibilities
We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities; it is only the particular ass that does so whom we can’t tolerate.
—William James
Topics: Sincerity, Candor
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: Persuasion, Truth
The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.
—William James
Topics: Experience, Memory
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: Fortune, Acceptance, Adversity, Misfortunes
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: Decisions, Decision, Indecision, Habit
Belief creates the actual fact.
—William James
Topics: Belief
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
The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That – with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word ‘success’ – is our national disease.
—William James
Topics: Success, Success & Failure
The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
—William James
Topics: Truth
Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.
—William James
Topics: Despair
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
—William James
Topics: Faith
To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
—William James
Topics: Psychiatry
Experience has ways of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas
—William James
Topics: Experience
These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
—William James
Topics: Anxiety, Optimism, Belief, Create, Living, Fear, Positive Attitudes, Life, Life and Living, Believe, Attitude, Intelligence, Beliefs, Act
Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.
—William James
Topics: Individuality, Feelings
Habit is thus the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.
—William James
If a man’s good for nothing else, he can at least teach philosophy.
—William James
Topics: Philosophy
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
All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish.
—William James
Topics: Youth
Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.
—William James
Topics: Thinking
Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
—William James
Topics: Worth
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
The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
—William James
Topics: Genius
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
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Robert Anton Wilson American Polymath
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Mortimer J. Adler American Philosopher, Educator
Michel Foucault French Philosopher
Georges Bataille French Essayist, Intellectual
Ludwig Wittgenstein Austrian-born British Philosopher