William James
William James
William Jameswas 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth11 January 1842
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
William James quotes about
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.
Belief creates the actual fact.
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.
When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.
The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.
I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride.
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.