William James

"To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly."

"Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude."

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

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes."

"Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results."

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

"'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."

"A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain."

"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."

"Begin to be now what you will be hereafter."

"Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact."

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

"If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience."

"Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second."

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

"Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power."

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

"The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one."

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

"The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals."

"The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it."

"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."

"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."

"There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self."

"This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it."

"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."