Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.

I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.

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.

Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.

To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein