When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will. — William James Copy Share Image
Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality. — William James Copy Share Image
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought. — William James Copy Share Image
To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind. — William James Copy Share Image
“Whatever is beyond this narrow rational consciousness we mistake for our only consciousness.” — William James Copy Share Image
The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time — William James Copy Share Image
The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other. — William James Copy Share Image
Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought. — William James Copy Share Image
The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of… — William James Copy Share Image
As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different… — William James Copy Share Image
The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that… — William James Copy Share Image
The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ… — William James Copy Share Image
Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted… — William James Copy Share Image
The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to… — William James Copy Share Image
Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception… — William James Copy Share Image
There is but one indefectibly certain truth , and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, the truth that… — William James Copy Share Image
The gist of the matter is this: Every impression that comes in from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an… — William James Copy Share Image
Consciousness... does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the… — William James Copy Share
The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet… — William James Copy Share
The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory… — William James Copy Share Image
“Everyone knows what attention is. It is taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what… — William James Copy Share Image
The first effect of the mind growing cultivated is that processes once multiple get to be performed in a single act. Lazarus… — 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 sounds of the world melt into a confused unity, the attention is dispersed so that the whole body is felt, as it were, at once, and the foreground of consciousness is filled, if by anything, by a sort… — William James Copy Share
To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that… — William James Copy Share Image
Since you make evil or good by your own thoughts, it is your ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your… — William James Copy Share Image
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in… — William James Copy Share Image
Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance… — William James Copy Share Image
The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our… — William James Copy Share Image
As the brain changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but… — William James Copy Share Image
Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having… — 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 feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as… — 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 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 as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and belief, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it… — 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 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 the waves sparkling and the sea-gulls circling around Fort Wagner's ancient site. But the great earthworks and their thundering cannon, the commanders and their followers, the wild assault and repulse that for a brief space made… — William James Copy Share
