Inspirational Quotes by William James — Words of Wisdom for Daily Success

“All religions and spiritual traditions begin with the cry "Help!”

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

“Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.”

“Belief creates the actual fact.”

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

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”

“An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously till we found something less excentric.”

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

“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.”

“إن بيننا وبين الله رابطة لا تنفصم، فإذا نحن أخضعنا أنفسنا لإشرافه - سبحانه وتعالى - تحققت أمنياتنا وآمالنا كلها.”

“There is something almost shocking in the notion of so chaste a function carrying this Kantian hurlyburly in her womb.”

“Wisdom is seeing something in a non-habitual manner.”

“Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. The fundamental conceptions of psychology are practically very clear to us, but theoretically they are very confused, and one easily makes the obscurest assumptions in this science without realizing, until challenged, what internal difficulties they involve.”

“the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess sucess is our national disease”

“See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalises. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts of definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it remains a pure abstraction, to the bare name of which we must defer. When the pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just why we must defer, the rationalist is unable to recognise the concretes from which his own abstraction is taken. He accuses us of denying truth; whereas we have only sought to trace exactly why people follow it and always ought to follow it. Your typical ultra-abstractions fairly shudders at concreteness: other things equal, he positively prefers the pale and spectral. If the two universes were offered, he would always choose the skinny outline rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much purer, clearer, nobler.”

“Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?”

“Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.”

“It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. By being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all.”

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

“Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.”

“if you can change your mind, you can change your life.”

“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.”

“The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. As you think, so shall you be.”

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

“To change ones life, start immediately, do it flamboyantly, no exceptions.”

“The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.”