Quote

So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.

William James

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Depends
Feeling
Feelings
Back
Self
World
Entirely

More quotes by William James

Image
The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
William James
Image
In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.
William James
Image
The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.
William James
Image
...These healers...my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories....But their facts are patent and startling and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity.
William James
Image
Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
William James
Image
With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
William James
Image
Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
William James
Image
The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.
William James
Image
Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
William James
Image
Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.
William James
Image
If you can change your mind, you can change your life.
William James
Image
If it works, it's true.
William James
Image
Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.
William James
Image
The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
William James
Image
Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
William James
Image
I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.
William James
Image
My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
William James
Image
Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
William James
Image
What a teacher needs to know about psychology might almost be written on the palm of one's hand.
William James
Image
As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird 's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.
William James