William james quotes

Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do

The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.

There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

You can be an artist without visual images, a reader without eyes, a mass of erudition with a bad elementary memory. In almost any subject your passion for the subject will save you. If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich; if you wish to be learned, you will be learned; if you wish to be good, you will be good. Only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them with exclusiveness, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.

Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

The greatest discovery of the 20th Century is that our attitude of mind determines our quality of life, not circumstances.

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

To change one's life: a. Start immediately b. B. Do it flamboyantly c. No exceptions Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.

The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.

Truth is something that happens to an idea.

What holds attention determines action.

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.

It is your friends who make your world.

All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.

We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition

We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality.

Act the part and you will become the part.

Belief creates the actual fact.

We must not just patch and tinker with life. We must keep renewing it. Embrace novelty and uniqueness.

We don't laugh because we're happy - we're happy because we laugh.

Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education.

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.

I don't sing because I'm happy; I'm happy because I sing.

Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.

To kill time is not murder, it's suicide.

The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

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.

Once a decision is reached, stop worrying and start working.

The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

A winner's attitude: it may be difficult, but it's possible. A loser's attitude: It may be possible, but it's too difficult.

Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction

Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can be more base and unworthy than the pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills it may have been engendered? What is more injurious to others? What less helpful as a way out of the difficulty? It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble which occasioned it, and increases the total evil of the situation. At all costs, then, we ought to reduce the sway of that mood; we ought to scout it in ourselves and others, and never show it tolerance.

The power to move the world is in the subconcious mind

Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair.

The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.

Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.

It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.

Actions seems to follow feeling, but really actions and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.

The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.

My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.

The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.

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

A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.

Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.

Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.

To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.

Give your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.

Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the state of their mind.

You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.

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

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.

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

If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the "as if" technique.

The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.

Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.

So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second.

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.

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

When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.

A man of sense is never discouraged by difficulties; he redoubles his industry and his diligence, he perseveres and infallibly prevails at last.

In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.

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

There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.

If you can change your mind, you can change your life.

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

You may not get everything you dream about, but you will never get anything you don't dream about.

Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.

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

If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.

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

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

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.

If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.

A man may not achieve everything he has dreamed, but he will never achieve anything great without having dreamed it first.

Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.

The good we do today becomes the happiness of tomorrow.

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity.

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.

Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.

So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.

A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

The strenuous life tastes better

Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.

The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. . . . And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.

Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will.

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.

Our beliefs are really rules for action.

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

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.

Man can change his life simply by changing his attitude.

Most unhappiness is caused because people listen to themselves... instead of talking to themselves.

The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.

The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down.

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.