William James
William James
William Jameswas an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, James was one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers the United States has ever produced, while others have labelled him the "Father of American psychology". Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, he is considered to be...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth11 January 1842
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Actions seems to follow feeling, but really actions and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.
The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.
The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down.
The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.
All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.
Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.