William James The Principles of Psychology
To his wife, Alice Gibbons James (1878)
1920s, The Letters of William James (1920)
Source: The Principles of Psychology
Context: I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: "This is the real me!"
“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.”
To Carl Stumpf (1 January 1886)
1920s, The Letters of William James (1920)
Variant: Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
“We don’t laugh because we’re happy, we’re happy because we laugh.”
Variant: I don't sing because I'm happy. I'm happy because I sing.
“Wherever you are it is your own friends who make your world.”
As quoted in The Thought and Character of William James (1935) by Ralph Barton Perry, Vol. II, ch. 91
1890s
"Man alone, of all creatures of earth, can change his thought pattern and become the architect of his destiny." Actually said by Spencer W. Kimball, twelfth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in his Miracle of Forgiveness (1969), p. 114. This predates any of the misquotations.
Other forms: "The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind." This is also misattributed to Albert Schweitzer.
James did say: "As life goes on, there is a constant change of our interests, and a consequent change of place in our systems of ideas, from more central to more peripheral, and from more peripheral to more central parts of consciousness."
Misattributed
Context: Man alone, of all the creatures on earth, can change his own patterns. Man alone is the architect of his destiny. The greatest revolution in our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives … It is too bad that most people will not accept this tremendous discovery and begin living it.