The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
WILLIAM JAMESTo give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
More William James Quotes
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We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
WILLIAM JAMES -
To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.
WILLIAM JAMES -
So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end…and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.
WILLIAM JAMES -
A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
WILLIAM JAMES -
True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot
WILLIAM JAMES -
The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains; under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
WILLIAM JAMES -
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
WILLIAM JAMES -
Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain.
WILLIAM JAMES -
The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
WILLIAM JAMES -
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
WILLIAM JAMES -
I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives
WILLIAM JAMES -
Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Man, biologically considered … is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own kind.
WILLIAM JAMES






