William James

Quotes are word for word from the source.

• Belief creates reality

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

  Our noteEncouraging a positive outlook to shape one's experience.

• Value of struggle

  “Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void.”

  Our noteAnalyzing why humans find more meaning in effort than in ease.

• Small differences matter

  “There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important.”

  Our noteJames quotes a carpenter discussing the subtle but vital distinctions between individuals.

• Action creates impact

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

  Our noteEncouraging Helen Keller by emphasizing the power of individual action.

• Criteria for value

  “Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria.”

  Our noteJames discusses how to evaluate the validity of spiritual or philosophical states.

• Misunderstood truth

  “There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.”

  Our noteReflecting on how truths can be distorted by the audience's perception.

• Individual destiny

  “The pivot round which the religious life... revolves, is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny.”

  Our noteJames discusses the core motivation behind religious life and human egotism.

• Focus on essence

  “The theories which Religion generates, being thus variable, are secondary; and if you wish to grasp her essence, you must look to the feelings and the conduct”

  Our noteHe argues that practical conduct and feelings are more constant than changing theories.

• Finding inner peace

  “The only thing that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.”

  Our noteDiscussing the core findings of religious experience and human connection to a larger power.

• Channeling energy

  “We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings.”

  Our noteSuggesting that martial virtues should be redirected toward constructive civic goals.

• Quality in details

  “The difference between the first- and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition - it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind - yet what miles away in the point of preciousness!”

  Our noteJames discusses the subtle but vast difference between excellence and mediocrity.

• Courage in daily work

  “He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won't be worth as much as a little coyote.”

  Our noteJames wrote to his son about witnessing a coyote's struggle for survival.

• Valuing Individual Uniqueness

  “"How delicious," he cried, "is the fact that you can't cram individuals under cut-and-dried heads of classification!"”

  Our noteJames expressed his joy in the fact that people are too unique to be easily categorized.

• Focus and energy

  “I am conscious of a desire I never had before so strongly or so permanently, of narrowing and deepening the channel of my intellectual activity, of economizing my feeble energies and consequently treating with more _respect_ the few things I shall devote them to.”

  Our noteJames reflects on the need to narrow his focus to be more effective.

• Seeking learning aids

  “It behooves me to learn something of the "Philosopher of Königsberg," and I want these to ease the way.”

  Our noteJames asks his father to send books to help him study Kant.

• Urge for action

  “I have reached an age when practical work of some kind clamors to be done--and I must still wait!”

  Our noteJames expresses his frustration with prolonged study and the lack of practical application in his career.

• Overcoming inadequacy

  “I meant only to say that you should not be deterred from treating him in your own way from fear of inadequacy. All his commentators must undoubtedly be inadequate for some time to come; but they will all help each other out.”

  Our noteEncouraging a writer to share their perspective despite feeling unqualified.

• Direct networking approach

  “I presented them with my visiting card, saying that I was with their "Schriften sehr vertraut und wollte nicht eher Prague verlassen als bis ich wenigstens ein Paar Worte mit ihnen umtauschte”

  Our noteJames describes how he introduced himself to famous scholars in Prague to initiate meetings.

• Professional duty

  “Dienst ist Dienst._ That is really the German motto everywhere--and I should like to know what American would ever think of justifying himself by just that formula.”

  Our noteJames observes the strict adherence to duty and rules in German professional culture.

• Dangers of busywork

  “Teaching duties have really devoured the whole of my time this winter, and with hardly any intellectual profit whatever. I have read nothing, and written nothing save one lecture on the freedom of the will.”

  Our noteJames laments how administrative and teaching duties prevented him from doing deep intellectual work.

• Intellectual humility

  “No man on either side awakens any sense of intellectual respect in me who regards the solution as a cock-sure and immediately given thing, and wonders that any one should hesitate to choose his party.”

  Our noteJames expresses his lack of respect for those who view complex philosophical problems as having simple, obvious answers.

• Choosing a side

  “Indeterminism is the only way to _break_ the world into good parts and into bad, and to stand by the former as against the latter.”

  Our noteJames argues that for a moral life, we must believe we have the power to choose good over evil.

• Open minded investigation

  “I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomenon are _impossible”

  Our noteJames discusses the importance of investigating psychic phenomena without prior bias.

• Quality through pacing

  “You will do the better work doubtless for doing it a little more slowly.”

  Our noteJames was advising a friend with heart trouble to slow down his work pace.

• Commercial product value

  “I think I have produced a tome of pedagogic classic which will enrich both you and me, if not the student's mind.”

  Our noteJames describes his simplified textbook intended for a broader, more profitable market.

• Failed negotiation risk

  “The worst of it is that he will probably give us nothing,--having got all the attention and flattery from us at which he aimed”

  Our noteJames reflects on a wealthy donor who took their attention without providing funding.

• The sensory threshold

  “A light may be so weak as not sensibly to dispel the darkness, a sound so low as not to be heard, a contact so faint that we fail to notice it.”

  Our noteHe explains that a certain amount of stimulus is required before the mind notices anything.

• Nature of sound

  “Physically, sounds consist of vibrations, and these are, generally speaking, _aërial waves”

  Our noteDefining the physical basis of sound as vibrations traveling through the air.

• Direct sensation

  “But we can only _infer_ that which we already generically know in some more direct fashion, and it is experimentally certain that we have the feeling of motion given us as a direct and simple _sensation”

  Our noteHe explains that motion is felt directly rather than just being inferred from position changes.

• Value of immobility

  “Creatures 'stalking' their prey and creatures hiding from their pursuers alike show how immobility diminishes conspicuity.”

  Our noteHe describes how lack of movement helps in both hunting and hiding.