William James

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.”

“The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.”

“Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second.”

“Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.”

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

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

“'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.”

“In certain diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark, without memory of the past or thought of the future, and with the present narrowed down to some one simple emotion or sensation of the body.”

“Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.”

“Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.”

“The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.”

“Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.”

“How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.”

“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”

“Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.”

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

“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.”

“Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.”

“Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.”

“Belief creates the actual fact.”