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Portrait of William James

William James

(1842–1910) Philosopher Kingdom of Great Britain

854 quotes in 2434 categories

William James’s thoughts unfold across eight hundred fifty‑four entries, weaving psychology, philosophy, and practical advice. His writings balance scientific curiosity with a warm, humanistic touch that still feels relevant today.

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William James was a philosopher from the Kingdom of Great Britain, best known for The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Quick Facts About William James

Born: January 11, 1842
Died: August 26, 1910
Nationality: Kingdom of Great Britain
Profession: Philosopher
Notable works: The Varieties of Religious Experience

About William James

William James was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers and is often dubbed the "father of American psychology".

Biography source: Wikipedia

Quotes by William James

The strenuous life tastes better

Life

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You can't out-perform your self-image.

Identity

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Lay plans as if we were to be immortal.

Ifs

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Truth happens to an idea

Happens

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We are mere bundles of habits.

Bundles

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No decision is, in itself, a decision.

Decision

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“our experience is what we attend to”

Attend

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The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

Cure

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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.

Appreciation

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Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

Difference

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The good we do today becomes the happiness of tomorrow.

Happiness

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We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves.

Copiers

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“None of us are ever who we were yesterday.”

Yesterday

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Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

Eternal

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The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.

Human

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To know one thing thoroughly would be to know the universe.

Know

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...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.

Agree

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You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.

Cash

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Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.

Belief

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The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.

Grows

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If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.

Drunkenness

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Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university.

Character

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It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.

Authority

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Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to…

Acting

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Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and…

Courage

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Truth is what works. Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so…

Faith

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The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The…

Art

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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and…

Affair

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

Biology

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Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is obvious.…

Cases

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“...our moral and practical attitude…impulses, inhibitions… how it contains and moulds us by its restrictive pressure almost as if we were fluids…

Subconscious

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A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively…

Application

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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…

Accepted

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“There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it positively refuses to account…

Evil

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It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than…

Be a slave

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Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt,…

Anger

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What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute…

Anon

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Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep…

Anxiety

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We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may…

Aggression

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Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances,…

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William James by topic

Life (116) Psychology (92) Philosophy (88) Men (85) Truth (78) Ifs (65) May (61) Inspirational (61) Religion (59) Faith (57) Mind (51) Facts (43) Way (40) Time (40) World (39) Belief (39) Science (38) Education (36) Humans (35) Thinking (34) Educational (34) Love (33) Literature (33) Habit (33) Ideas (31)