Quotes by James, William

"We don't laugh because we're happy -- we're happy because we laugh."

James, William on laughter
14 fans of this quote   

"Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice."

James, William on life   

"The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it."

James, William on life
3 fans of this quote   

"Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver."

James, William on life   

"We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable."

James, William on life   

"The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated."

James, William on approval
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"When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion."

James, William on materialism   

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"Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly."

James, William on physics   

"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."

James, William on physics   

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"The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers."

James, William on middle class   

"If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door."

James, William on miracles
3 fans of this quote   

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"Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune."

James, William on misfortunes   

"For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers."

James, William on morality   

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"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."

James, William on perseverance
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"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."

James, William on persuasion   

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"To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking."

James, William on philosophers and philosophy
3 fans of this quote   

"I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds."

James, William on philosophers and philosophy   

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"Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits."

James, William on philosophers and philosophy
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"The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind."

James, William on attitude
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"It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome."

James, William on attitude
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"Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses power of various sorts which he habitually fails to use."

James, William on possibilities   

"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."

James, William on possibilities
3 fans of this quote   

"Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use 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."

James, William on potential   

"Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitement's of that day do not call forth. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. The human individual usually lives far within his limits."

James, William on potential   

"If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick."

James, William on potential
3 fans of this quote   

"We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition."

James, William on poverty and the poor   

"What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise -- although the philosophers generally call it recognition!"

James, William on praise   

"I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride."

James, William on pride   

"To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal."

James, William on psychiatry   

"The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it."

James, William on purpose
13 fans of this quote   

"There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse."

James, William on religion   

"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."

James, William on resignation   

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"It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all."

James, William on risk
4 fans of this quote   

"Man lives for science as well as bread."

James, William on science   

"Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions."

James, William on self-image   

"There is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!"

James, William on love
3 fans of this quote   

"A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him."

James, William on socializing and socialism   

"Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects in the phenomenal world."

James, William on spirituality   

"If you want a trait, act as if you already have the trait."

James, William on action
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"I will act as if what I do makes a difference."

James, William on action