1842-1910, American Psychologist, Professor, Author
The path to cheerfulness is to sit cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.
William James – [Cheerfulness]

The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
William James – [Middle Class]

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
William James – [Worry]

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.
William James – [Alcohol and Alcoholism]

There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual.
William James – [Evil]

There is a voice inside which speaks and says: ''This is the real me!''
William James – [Self-love]

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
William James – [Failure]

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.
William James – [Indecision]

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.
William James – [Religion]

Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.
William James – [Cheerfulness]

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
William James – [Philosophers and Philosophy]

To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
William James – [Deception]

To spend life for something which outlasts it.
William James – [Achievement]

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
William James – [Psychiatry]

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
William James – [Causes]

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
William James – [Life and Living]

We don't laugh because we're happy — we're happy because we laugh.
William James – [Laughter]

We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone, until those smiling possibilities are dead.
William James – [Effort]

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 general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.
William James – [Poverty and The Poor]

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can…in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
William James – [Habit]

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