William James Quote: Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we...

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.

— William James

Source: The Varieties of Religious Experiences - 1902

waking special normal type entirely

Select Quotes by William James

My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing.

— William James

Source: Principles of Psychology - Chapter 22 - 1890

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us as long to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking.

— William James

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that 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 test. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

— William James

Source: Principles of Psychology - Chapter 4 - 1890