Quotes from William James

Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or on being.

The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.

Seek out that particular mental attitude which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, "This is the real me," and when you have found that attitude, follow it.

It is only by risking ... that we live at all.

Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.

Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for, and is therefore right in postulating, may be enveloped in a wider order, on which she has no claim at all.

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

So long as the anti-militarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of hate, so long they fail to realize the full equities of the situation.

Footnotes, the little dogs yapping at the heels of the text.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.

Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors.

In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible.

The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.

The war-function has grasped us so far; but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden.

So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community and until an equivalent discipline is organized I believe that war must have its way.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will.

Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.

Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.

One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the state of their mind.

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

A man may not achieve everything he has dreamed, but he will never achieve anything great without having dreamed it first.