Quote

What holds attention determines action.

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
Determines
Holds
Determine
Attention
Action

More quotes by William James

Image
Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.
William James
Image
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker if sad, it must not scream or curse.
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
Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for, and is therefore right in postulating, may be enveloped in a wider order, on which she has no claim at all.
William James
Image
The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.
William James
Image
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
William James
Image
If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the as if technique.
William James
Image
The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.
William James
Image
Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.
William James
Image
Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.
William James
Image
Science can tell us what exists but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.
William James
Image
Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.
William James
Image
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.
William James
Image
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
William James
Image
The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
William James
Image
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
William James
Image
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
William James
Image
Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse
William James
Image
Individuality is founded in feeling and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.
William James
Image
In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
William James