Thinking Quotes by William James

Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.

— William James

A thing is important if anyone think it important.

— William James

Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness.

— William James

Philosophy is "an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.

— William James

The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.

— William James

“My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing.”

— William James

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

— William James

In the last analysis, then, we believe that we all know and think about and talk about the same world because we…

— William James

... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really…

— William James

The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only…

— William James

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.

— William James

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

— William James

My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at…

— William James

True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular…

— William James

The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of…

— William James

Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the practical…

— William James

The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that…

— William James

Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should…

— William James

The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In…

— William James

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon…

— William James

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give…

— William James

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

The art of remembering is the art of thinking. When we wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind…

— William James

Essential truth, the truth of the intellectualists, the truth with no one thinking it, is like the coat that fits tho no…

— William James

Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived…

— William James

... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not…

— William James

When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when…

— William James

Compared with men, it is probable that brutes neither attend to abstract characters, nor have associations by similarity. Their thoughts probably pass…

— William James

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us…

— William James

The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with…

— William James

Pluralism lets things really exist in the each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or collective-unit form is the only form…

— William James

We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions.

— William James

There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be,…

— William James

A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and…

— William James