WIST

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

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“Is Life Worth Living?” The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“The Dilemma of Determinism” (1884)

The details vanish in the bird’s-eye view; but so does the bird’s-eye view vanish in the details.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“The Importance of Individuals,” The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

If you ask what these experiences are, they are conversations with the unseen, voices and visions, responses to prayer, changes of heart, deliverances from fear, inflowings of help, assurances of support, whenever certain persons set their own internal attitude in certain appropriate ways.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“The Pragmatic Method”, Address, Philosophical Unon of the University of California (26 Aug 1898)
Full text.

To preach skepticism to us as a duty until “sufficient evidence” for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“The Will to Believe” (1896)

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

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“The Will to Believe” (1896)

Every Jack sees in his own particular Jill charms and perfections to the enchantment of which we stolid onlookers are stone-cold. And which has the superior view of the absolute truth, he or we? Which has the more vital insight into the nature of Jill’s existence, as a fact? Is he in excess, being in this matter a maniac? or are we in defect, being victims of a pathological anesthesia as regards Jill’s magical importance? Surely the latter; surely to Jack are the profounder truths revealed; surely poor Jill’s palpitating little life-throbs are among the wonders of creation, are worthy of this sympathetic interest; and it is to our shame that the rest of us cannot feel like Jack. For Jack realizes Jill concretely, and we do not. He struggles toward a union with her inner life, divining her feelings, anticipating her desires, understanding her limits as manfully as he can, and yet inadequately, too; for he also is afflicted with some blindness, even here. Whilst we, dead clods that we are, do not even seek after these things, but are contented that that portion of eternal fact named Jill should be for us as if it were not. Jill, who knows her inner life, knows that Jack’s way of taking it — so importantly — is the true and serious way; and she responds to the truth in him by taking him truly and seriously, too. May the ancient blindness never wrap its clouds about either of them again! Where would any of us be, were there no one willing to know us as we really are or ready to repay us for our insight by making recognizant return? We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“What Makes a Life Significant?” Lecture, Harvard (1900)

The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts life.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
(Attributed)

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

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
(Attributed)

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

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
(Attributed)

Boredom results from being attentive to the passage of time itself.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
(Attributed)

Be willing to have it so; acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
(Attributed) (1879?)

Whenever two people meet there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
(Attributed) (1890?)

Her only test of probably truth is what works best inthe wya of leading us, what fits every part of life best and comines with the collectivity of experience’s demands, nothing being omitted.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Lecture 2, “What Pragmatism Means” (1907)
Full text. "Her" is "Pragmatism." Often paraphrased as "Truth is what works."

I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Lecture 3 “Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered” (1907)
Full text.

There is no more miserable human being that one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Principles of Psychology, ch. 4 (1890)
Full text.

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 fashioning our characters in the wrong way. 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. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Principles of Psychology, ch. 4 (1890)
Full text.

The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Talks to Teachers on Psychology, Part 2, Lecture 3 “What Makes a Life Significant” (1899)
Full text.

Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up, a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
The Principles of Psychology, ch. 4 (1890)

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging of an uncompleted task.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Letter to Carl Stumpf (1 Jan 1886)

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.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Letter to E.L. Godkin (24 Dec 1895)
Full text.

The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That — with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success — is our national disease.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Letter to H.G. Wells (11 Sep 1906)

I now perceive one immense omission in my Psychology,– the deepest principle of Human Nature is the craving to be appreciated, and I left it out altogether from the book, because I had never had it gratified till now.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Letter to his Class a Radcliffe College which had sent a potted azalea to him at Easter (6 Apr 1896)

I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone. It made me think how brave all living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully — and losing it — just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won’t be worth as much as a little coyote.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Letter to his son from the Yosemite Valley (28 Aug 1889)
Full text.

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Letter to W. Lutoslawski (6 May 1906)

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

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Letter to W. Lutoslawski (6 May 1906)