William James

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

To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.

We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.

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

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

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

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

To spend life for something which outlasts it.

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

That which is most personal, is most interesting.

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.

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.

Truth is what works.

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.

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year whether he feels like taking it or not.

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

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.

These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.

So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.

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

The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.

If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when, gradually or suddenly, it passes away and we are fresher than before!

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

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

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

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

My experience is what I agree to attend to.

I will act as if what I do makes a difference.

The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.

'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for he better kind of man a loss of appetite for mediocrities.

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

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.

The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.

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

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!

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

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

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.

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

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

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

If you give appreciation to people you win their goodwill.

The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.

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

As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it so reasonable arguments challenges to magnanimity and appeals to sympathy or justice are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa constrictors.

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

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

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.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

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

Whenever youre 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 can change your mind, you can change your life.

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

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

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

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.

Impulse without reason is not enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is mans lack of faith in his true self.

A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.

There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.

To change one's life: start immediately, Do it flamboyantly, no exceptions, no excuses.

Whenever youre in conflict with someone there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude

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

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

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

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

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

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.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

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

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

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

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

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.

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

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

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

When you live your life with an appreciation of coincidences and their meanings, you connect with the underlying field of infinite possibilities.

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

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.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

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.

Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

The path to cheerfulness is to sit cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time.

Most people never run far enough on the first wind to find out theyve got a second. Give your dreams all youve got and youll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.

Time itself comes in drops.

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

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.