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

William James

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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Misery
Decision
Indecisive
Inspirational
Indecision
Human
Habitual
Humans
Statistics
Nothing
Miserable
Philosophical
Sadness

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New habits can be launched.
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We can act as if there were a God feel as if we were free consider Nature as if she were full of special designs lay plans as if we were to be immortal and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.
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Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.
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We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
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The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.
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The strenuous life tastes better
William James
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If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.
William James
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Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.
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Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.
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Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least.
William James
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There is a voice inside which speaks and says, This is the real me!
William James
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The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.
William James
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The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
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Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.
William James
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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
William James
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[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
William James
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The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
William James
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The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.
William James
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Lay plans as if we were to be immortal.
William James