Particular Quotes by William James

Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.

— William James

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

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

“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

Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.

— William James

'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

— William James

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

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

It is your friends who make your world.

— William James

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

— William James

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

“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

There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.

— William James

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

— William James

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