Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
— William James
What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.
Man lives for science as well as bread.
Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.
Truth is what works.
The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.
Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.
To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.
Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.
The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.
A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!
If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.
Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
Time itself comes in drops.
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.
I don't sing because I'm happy; I'm happy because I sing.
The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
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.
This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
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.
