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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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
As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
—William James
Topics: Belief
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
—William James
Topics: Procrastination, Work
We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
—William James
Topics: Nature, Life
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
The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own particular ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.
—William James
Topics: Happiness, Friendship
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: Thoughts, Thought, Thinking
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
A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.
—William James
Topics: Philosophy
A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
—William James
Topics: Socialism, Communism
The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
—William James
Topics: Truth
Act as though what you do makes a difference. It does.
—William James
Topics: Act, Kindness, Doing Your Best, Action, Helping
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
Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.
—William James
Topics: Attitude, Conflict
The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.
—William James
Topics: Alcohol, Alcoholism
Men’s activities are occupied into ways—in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
—William James
Topics: Chance, Circumstance
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
It is only by risking … that we live at all.
—William James
Topics: Danger, Risk
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
This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
—William James
Topics: Meaning, Purpose
If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
—William James
Topics: Potential
Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind—without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
—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, Believe, Beliefs, Living, Act, Intelligence, Create, Life and Living, Belief, Attitude, Optimism, Life, Positive Attitudes, Fear
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
Man lives for science as well as bread.
—William James
Topics: Science
Men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they possess and which they might use under appropriate circumstances.
—William James
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties
The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
—William James
Topics: Worry
What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise—although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
—William James
Topics: Praise
Belief creates the actual fact.
—William James
Topics: Belief
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