William James Quotes

To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.

I do not think that everybody has to struggle. But to probably at least half of the people, it never seems to enter their minds that they might be engaged in a struggle or that there might be something to struggle with.

I naturally have a me-against-the-world mentality, and I've been fighting it since I was 13. It's felt like it's only gotten me in lonely, angry places.

One thing that I've learned about myself is I have to trust what I see. And that maybe sounds silly, but there's things that I feel or see during a game that, you know, I used to explain it as I have an angel on one shoulder that's telling me to run the play and the devil on the other shoulder that's telling me really what I should do.

There is scarcely any passion without struggle.

There are times when things are clear in your head and your heart and everything comes all aligned and it's easy and it just feels good to do something. But most of the time it's not like that. Most of the time there's conflict between your head and your heart.

If your heart tells you something but your mind tells you something else, which do you believe? Both are just as apt to lie. In fact, they play at deceit all the time. Mostly they balance each other, giving us that crucial reality check. But what happens on the rare occasions when they conspire together?

It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.

When I turn the lights out, when I close my eyes, reality overcomes me, I'm living a lie.

I don't have confidence in my instincts, and I feel like I have to go through a very right-brain and left-brain process.

Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find, for a mind maker-upper to make up his mind

Sometimes what my analytical mind says to me is not what I'll do.

When you fight something, you're tied to it forever. As long as you're fighting it, you’re giving it power.

I've always been drawn to stories and characters facing some sort of struggle against forces beyond our control, be it love, loss, betrayal.

Before he has seen the whole, how unusually perceptive and imaginative the person must be to evolve the entire sequence by meditating on its single, pair or triplet of essential images.

These tremendous contradictions in our intellect, in our knowledge, yea, in all the facts of our life face us on all sides.

Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?

Reasons always came with a purpose, to give the appearance of a struggle between principle and desire. Principle had power only until you found what you had to have.

Where was it ever promised us that life on this earth can ever be easy, free from conflict and uncertainty, devoid of anguish and wonder and pain? Those who seek the folly of unrelieved 'happiness'-who fear moods, who shun solitude, who do not know the diginity of occasional depression-can find bliss easily enough: in tranquilizing pills, or in senility. The purpose of life is not to be happy.

Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.

I can't shove the dark out of my way.

My fine visions are all very well, but I must not forget they are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter.

What I find really difficult is making career decisions. Normally it will take me two weeks, until the very last minute and I have to say yes or no. For a couple of weeks, I will tune everyone out who is giving me advice, so that I can make a clear decision on my own and it takes time.

The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.