But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine. — William James Copy Share Image
There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough. — William James Copy Share Image
We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could. — William James Copy Share Image
If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately. — William James Copy Share Image
If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the "as if" technique. — 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
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
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
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
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
Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth,… — William James Copy Share Image
If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being… — 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
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
“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 you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. Only you must, then, really wish these things,… — William James Copy Share Image
The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply… — William James Copy Share Image
We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full… — William James Copy Share Image
... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not… — William James Copy Share Image
“However inadequate our ideas of causal efficacy may be, we are less wide of the mark when we say that our ideas… — William James Copy Share Image
If I should throw down a thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient number of… — William James Copy Share Image
Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a… — 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
Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be… — William James Copy Share Image
Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances,… — William James Copy Share Image
Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life's… — William James Copy Share Image
Even if matter could do every outward thing that God does, the idea of it would not work as satisfactorily, because the… — 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
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
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 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
There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be,… — 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
