Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

William James Philosopher

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: Jan 11, 1842
  • Died: Aug 26, 1910

William James was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, James was one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers the United States has ever produced, while others have labelled him the "Father of American psychology". Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, he is considered to be one of the major figures associated with the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of functional psychology. He also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James' work has influenced intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty.

Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James, and the diarist Alice James. James wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism.

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

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

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

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

Man lives for science as well as bread.

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

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

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

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

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

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

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.

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

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

Truth is what works.

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

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

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

If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.

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

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

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

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

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

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

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

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

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

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

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

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

Time itself comes in drops.

Belief creates the actual fact.

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

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

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

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