There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough. — William James Copy Share Image
But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine. — William James Copy Share Image
We need only in cold blood to act as if the thing in question were real and it will infallibly end by… — William James Copy Share Image
If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given… — William James Copy Share Image
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different… — William James Copy Share Image
Life feels like a real fight - as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our… — William James Copy Share Image
Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act… — William James Copy Share Image
On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. — William James Copy Share Image
... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really… — William James Copy Share Image
So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end...and a courage-fit will very likely… — William James Copy Share Image
If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one… — William James Copy Share Image
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived… — William James Copy Share Image
If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when, gradually… — William James Copy Share Image
The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the… — William James Copy Share Image
If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have… — William James Copy Share Image
But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every… — William James Copy Share Image
What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the… — William James Copy Share Image
Creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience… — William James Copy Share Image
The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and… — William James Copy Share Image
Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so may separate… — William James Copy Share Image
If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is… — William James Copy Share Image
We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. If you say that this is… — William James Copy Share Image
The "through-and-through" universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity , with no possibilities; its relations, with no… — William James Copy Share Image
That reality is 'independent' means that there is something in every experience that escapes our arbitrary control. If it be a sensible… — William James Copy Share Image
(Five) thinkers since Galileo, each informing his successor of what discoveries his own lifetime had seen achieved, might have passed the torch… — William James Copy Share Image
The art of remembering is the art of thinking. When we wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind… — William James Copy Share Image
If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe,… — William James Copy Share Image
There are 3 rules to follow if you want to change; (1) Start immediately, (2) Do it flamboyantly, (3) No exceptions. — William James Copy Share Image
To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off… — William James Copy Share Image
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and… — William James Copy Share Image
Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep… — William James Copy Share Image
The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and… — William James Copy Share Image
It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of… — William James Copy Share Image
You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from… — William James Copy Share Image
All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them.… — William James Copy Share Image
“Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the… — William James Copy Share Image
If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong… — William James Copy Share Image
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world. — William James Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. — 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, done them,… — William James Copy Share Image
“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 Image
