William James

“Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our mental and physical resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses power of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.”

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

“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.”

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

“Man, biologically considered... is the most formidable of all the beasts of prey, and indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own species.”

“Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.”

“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.”

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

“The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts life.”

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.”  (“The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds can change the outer aspects of their lives.”)

“The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.”

“The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist.”

“There is no greater lie than a truth misunderstood.”

“We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.”

“We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the inner scramble and pant with the money-making in the street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.”

“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.”