James, William

"The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude."

"Does consciousness exist if a man is asleep?"

"The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated."

"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact."

"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."

"There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self."

"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."

"Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."

"Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact."

"The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it."

"Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way."

"The only thing that's evil is when you despise yourself."

"The most precious possession you can own is an open heart."

"Human life is possible only because there is some such network of friendships and connexions as society is."

"The exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success is our national disease."

"Our normal waking consciousness 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."

"Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct."

"If merely feeling good is the whole of morality, musicians ought to be more virtuous than priests."

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

"The great use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it."

"True philosophy may be called a disease of which no one dies."

"This world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck."

"Tender-mindedness without tough-mindedness is mere sentimentalism and platitude."

"The part of wisdom is to do what you don't want to do."

"Is life worth living? Yes, so long as there is some work to be done."

"Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."

"To be radical, an idealist must be very reactionary."

"Neurotic individuals make poor citizens because they are too keenly aware of the general misery."

"Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent."