William James

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

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.

The more fervent opponents of Christian doctrine have often enough shown a temper which, psychologically considered, is indistinguishable from religious zeal.

Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.

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

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.

Suicide was naturally the consistent course dictated by the logical intellect. (Is suicide the ultimate sincerity? There seems to be no way to refute the logic of suicide but by the illogic of instinct.)

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

It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.

Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.

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[...] Bóg stworzył zło, czy je tylko toleruje?

Myślenie to jest to, co wielu ludzi uważa, że czyni, gdy jedynie na nowo porządkuje swe uprzedzenia.

Wielu ludzi pod pojęciem myślenia rozumie tylko przegrupowanie ich własnych przesądów.

To change one's life: 1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will create the fact. Be not afraid to live.

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

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

I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride.

The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.

When a thing is new, people say: 'It is not true.' Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: 'It is not important.' Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: 'Anyway, it is not new.'

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

Religion is the monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.

Sporadic great men come everywhere. But for a community to get vibrating through and through with intensely active life, many geniuses coming together and in rapid succession are required. This is why great epochs are so rare, - why the sudden bloom of a Greece, an early Rome, a Renaissance, is such a mystery. Blow must follow blow so fast that no cooling can occur in the intervals. Then the mass of the nation glows incandescent, and may continue to glow by pure inertia long after the originators of its internal movement have passed away. We often hear surprise expressed that in these high tides of human affairs not only the people should be filled with stronger life, but that individual geniuses should seem so exceptionally abundant. This mystery is just about as deep as the time-honored conundrum as to why great rivers flow by great t owns. It is true that great public fermentations awaken and adopt many geniuses who in more torpid times would have had no chance to work. But over and above this there must be an exceptional concourse of genius about a time, to make the fermentation begin at all. The unlikeliness of the concourse is far greater than the unlikeliness of any particular genius; hence the rarity of these periods and the exceptional aspect which they always wear.

A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.

Wierzę, że życie warte jest, aby je przeżyć. Twoja wiara pomoże Ci uczynić je pełnym wartości.

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

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