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.

Wisdom is seeing something in a non-habitual manner.

Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true. The whole...

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

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

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.

Much of what we call evil can often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer’s inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight

A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!

Man lives for science as well as bread.

Moral scepticism can no more be refuted or proved by logic than intellectual scepticism can. When we stick to it that there is truth (be it of either kind), we do so with our whole...

The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.

But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that...

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.

When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.

Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.

There is something almost shocking in the notion of so chaste a function carrying this Kantian hurlyburly in her womb.

Through prayer, religion insists, things which cannot be realized in any other manner come about: energy which but for prayer would be bound is by prayer set free and operates in some part, be it...

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the...

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

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.

Man flieht nicht, weil man Angst hat, sondern man hat Angst, weil man flieht.

I will analyze the actionsand appetites of men as if it were a question of lines, of planes,and of solids.

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

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

I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or wilfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain reason,...

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

Psychology is the science of mental life

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.

Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

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

‘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.

Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.

But psychology is passing into a less simple phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology has arisen in Germany, carried on by experimental methods, asking of course every moment for...

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

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

All religions and spiritual traditions begin with the cry “Help!

See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalises. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts...

In certain diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark, without memory of the past or thought of the future, and with the present narrowed down to some one simple emotion or sensation of the body.

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

We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.

The ‘I think’ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‘I breathe’ which actually does accompany them.

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

Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the...

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

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