The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time — William James Copy Share Image
... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences. — William James Copy Share Image
My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at… — William James Copy Share Image
The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands. — William James Copy Share Image
How many of us persist in a precipitate course which, but for a moment of heedlessness we might never have entered upon,… — William James Copy Share Image
The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially… — William James Copy Share Image
One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the… — William James Copy Share Image
How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our… — William James Copy Share Image
Every time a resolve or fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing fruit, it is worse than a chance lost; it works… — William James Copy Share Image
The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time… — William James Copy Share Image
Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them,… — William James Copy Share Image
How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive… — William James Copy Share Image
Out of time we cut 'days' and 'nights', 'summers' and 'winters.' We say what, each part of the sensible continuum is, and… — William James Copy Share Image
Let anyone try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or to attend to, the present moment of time. One… — William James Copy Share Image
Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it… — William James Copy Share Image
Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it… — William James Copy Share Image
We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments,… — William James Copy Share Image
The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the… — William James Copy Share Image
We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may… — William James Copy Share Image
Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and… — William James Copy Share Image
In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong,… — William James Copy Share Image
It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than… — William James Copy Share Image
“The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature… — William James Copy Share Image
“Most of us probably fall several times a day into a fit somewhat like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the… — William James Copy Share Image
“This sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy. Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best… — William James Copy Share Image
Voices of the glorified urge us onward. They who have passed from the semblances of time to the realities of eternity call… — William James Copy Share Image
Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ...… — William James Copy Share Image
To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience… — William James Copy Share Image
“To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense… — William James Copy Share Image
If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us… — William James Copy Share Image
Feed the growing human being, feed him with the sort of experience for which from year to year he shows a natural… — William James Copy Share Image
Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil… — William James Copy Share Image
I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular… — William James Copy Share Image
The most natively interesting object to a man is his own personal self and its fortunes. We accordingly see that the moment… — William James Copy Share Image
“Theologians have by this time stretched their minds so as to embrace the darwinian facts, and yet to interpret them as still… — William James Copy Share Image
When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when… — William James Copy Share Image
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world. — William James Copy Share
We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we… — William James Copy Share
In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who… — William James Copy Share
“Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered… — William James Copy Share
Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or… — William James Copy Share
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be. — William James Copy Share
Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them,… — William James Copy Share
“How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and… — William James Copy Share
There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere. — William James Copy Share
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. — William James Copy Share
The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes… — William James Copy Share
