William James Quotes

• Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

  William James

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  Tags in System, Fact

• Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

  William James

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  Tags in Currents, Passing

• If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

  William James

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  Tags in Planet, Change

• But actions originally prompted by conscious intelligence may grow so automatic by dint of habit as to be apparently unconsciously performed. Standing, walking, buttoning and unbuttoning, piano-playing, talking, even saying one’s prayers, may be done when the mind is absorbed in other things. The performances of animal instinct seem semi-automatic, and the reflex acts of self-preservation certainly are so. Yet they resemble intelligent acts in bringing about the same ends at which the animals’ consciousness, on other occasions, deliberately aims.

  William James

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Intuition, Habit

• The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

  William James

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  Tags in Greatest

• The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

  William James

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  Tags in Spend, Outlast, Great

• Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

  William James

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  Tags in Resources, Great

• Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.

  William James

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  Tags in Deepening, Between

• If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

  William James

  Topics in Leadership

  Tags in Attain, Care

• Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequence of any misfortune.

  William James

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  Tags in Acceptance

• The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

  William James

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  Tags in Deepest, Human Nature

• ‘Pure experience’ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

  William James

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Flux

• To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

  William James

  Tags in Element, Empiricism

• To spend life for something which outlasts it.

  William James

  Tags in Spend, Outlasts

• To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

  William James

  Tags in Normal, Abnormal

• We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

  William James

  Tags in Unendurable, Cling

• 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

  Tags in Opposite, Statement

• What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!

  William James

  Tags in Philosopher, Genuine

• The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.

  William James

  Tags in Essence, Overlook

• The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.

  William James

  Tags in Cannot, Wholesale

William James (125)

Birth:	11th January, 1842
Death:	26th August, 1910
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Philosopher, Psychologist

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