William James Philosophical Quotations

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.

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

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

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

To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.

The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.

Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.

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

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

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

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

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

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

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

Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.

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

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.

Time itself comes in drops.

Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens outthe widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread', as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage.

The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.

The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.

Belief creates the actual fact.

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.