Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by William James (American Philosopher)

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.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William James

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, Discover, Attitude, Great, Positive Attitudes, Live, Mind

There is a voice inside which speaks and says: “This is the real me!”
—William James
Topics: Self-love, Love

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
—William James

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
—William James
Topics: Doing Your Best

Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
—William James

Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
—William James
Topics: Science

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

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
—William James
Topics: Faith

With mere good intentions hell is Proverbially paved.
—William James
Topics: Inaction, Getting Going, Procrastination

The emotions aren’t always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
—William James

Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!
—William James
Topics: The Universe, Universe

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: Optimism, Positive Attitudes, Belief, Attitude, Life, Intelligence, Fear, Beliefs, Believe, Life and Living, Create, Living, Act, Anxiety

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 & Failure, Success

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

Faith is one of the forces by which men live; the total absence of it means collapse.
—William James
Topics: Faith, Belief

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
—William James
Topics: Worry

Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation.
—William James
Topics: Education

In the practical as in the theoretic life, the man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing, whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.
—William James
Topics: Accomplishment, Wealth

To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
—William James
Topics: Deception, Deception/Lying

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
—William James
Topics: Risk

When you live your life with an appreciation of coincidences and their meanings, you connect with the underlying field of infinite possibilities.
—William James
Topics: Living Well

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
—William James
Topics: Philosophy

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: Dream, Perseverance, Win, Energy, Persistence, Give, Dreams, People

If merely “feeling good” could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
—William James
Topics: Alcoholism, Alcohol

Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
—William James
Topics: Knowledge

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise—although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
—William James
Topics: Praise

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
—William James
Topics: Psychiatry

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

Experience has ways of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.
—William James
Topics: Experience

The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely “understandable” world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong.
—William James
Topics: Idealism

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