William James

Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.

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

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

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

Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.

I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.

The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.

There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.