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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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
—William James
Topics: Helping, Purpose, Aspirations, Life, Living, Meaning, Goals
Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
—William James
Topics: Justice
This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
—William James
Topics: Purpose, Meaning
To kill time is not murder, it’s suicide.
—William James
Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
—William James
Topics: Habit, Creativity, Genius
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
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: Life, Life and Living, Intelligence, Believe, Beliefs, Positive Attitudes, Anxiety, Belief, Attitude, Optimism, Living, Fear
Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest “swell,” but he simply cannot buy the right things.
—William James
Topics: Authors & Writing
How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
—William James
Topics: Action
If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.
—William James
The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
—William James
Topics: Truth
An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation.
—William James
Topics: Love, Ideas
He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.
—William James
Topics: Opportunity
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
—William James
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
Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.
—William James
Topics: Hope
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
—William James
Topics: Potential
Act as though what you do makes a difference. It does.
—William James
Topics: Kindness, Action, Doing Your Best, Helping
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
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
A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
—William James
Topics: Responsibility
Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
—William James
Topics: Thought
To change one’s life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions.
—William James
Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
—William James
Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
—William James
Topics: Anxiety, Fear
The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. As you think, so shall you be.
—William James
Topics: Optimism, Positive Attitudes, Discover, Attitude, Live
The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.
—William James
Topics: Men, Growth
Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second. Give your dreams all you’ve got and you’ll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
—William James
Topics: Win, Persistence, Dreams, People, Perseverance
The emotions aren’t always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
—William James
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