Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies ... and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation to grow as they will buy the roadside expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia.

— William James

Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will buy the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia.

— William James

If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.

— William James

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

— William James

If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

— William James

If you want a quality act as if you already had it.

— William James

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

— William James

I hope that here in America more and more the ideal of the well-trained and vigorous body will be maintained neck by neck with that of the well-trained and vigorous mind as the two coequal halves of the higher education for men and women alike.

— William James

Impulse without reason is not enough and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.

— William James

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 someone simple emotion or sensation of the body.

— William James