In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the… — 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… — William James Copy Share Image
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. — William James Copy Share Image
A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful… — William James Copy Share Image
But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their… — William James Copy Share Image
The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a bad conscience about her profession because she feels… — William James Copy Share Image
The greatest discovery of the 20th Century is that our attitude of mind determines our quality of life, not circumstances. — William James Copy Share Image
Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the… — 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
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
An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a… — William James Copy Share Image
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can. . . . The more… — William James Copy Share Image
The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and… — William James Copy Share Image
The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love… — 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… — William James Copy Share Image
“psychology is passing into a less simple phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology has arisen in… — William James Copy Share Image
To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value,… — William James Copy Share Image
The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it. — William James Copy Share Image
Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their… — 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
Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they… — William James Copy Share Image
“What right have we to believe Nature under any obligation to do her work by means of complete minds only? She may… — William James Copy Share Image
“Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. The fundamental conceptions of psychology are practically very clear to us,… — 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
