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Who really said it

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day

Written by William James 1842–1910 · American psychologist & philosopher, Harvard University
Verified Free to reuse

Genuine, and italicised by James himself. The sentence closes his practical maxims on habit in The Principles of Psychology, vol. I (New York: Henry Holt, 1890), ch. IV, “Habit,” pp. 126–27 — and it had already appeared, word for word, in his article “The Laws of Habit” in Popular Science Monthly for February 1887, p. 450.

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“Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day” William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1 (New York: Henry Holt, 1890), ch. IV, "Habit," pp. 126–27; first printed in "The Laws of Habit," Popular Science Monthly, February 1887, p. 450. Verified at quotle.info

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Provenance

The passage, in full

Work
The Principles of Psychology, Volume I
Passage
Chapter IV, “Habit,” pp. 126–27
Published
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1890
First printed
“The Laws of Habit,” Popular Science Monthly 30 (February 1887), p. 450

As a final practical maxim, relative to these habits of the will, we may, then, offer something like this: 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. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. 1890 · Ch. IV, “Habit”

The italics are James’s own, in both the 1887 magazine printing and the 1890 book. One word moved between them, in the sentence that follows: the 1887 Popular Science Monthly text reads “not unarmed and untrained,” the 1890 book “not unnerved and untrained.”

Magazine, February 1887
Read ‘The Laws of Habit’ as it ran in Popular Science Monthly
The Principles of Psychology, ch. IV ‘Habit’ — full text with original pagination

How the sentence travelled

  • February 1887. The maxim reaches print in James’s article “The Laws of Habit,” Popular Science Monthly vol. 30, pp. 433–451. The sentence sits on p. 450, already in italics (Wikisource transcription ↗).
  • 1890. The article becomes Chapter IV of The Principles of Psychology, at pp. 126–27. James footnotes the chapter himself: “This chapter has already appeared in the Popular Science Monthly for February 1887” (Project Gutenberg ↗).
  • 1899. James reworks the passage for Talks to Teachers on Psychology. The maxim survives word for word, but “systematically ascetic or heroic” becomes simply “systematically heroic,” and “for no other reason than that you would rather not do it” becomes “for no other reason than its difficulty” (Project Gutenberg ↗).
  • Today. Wikiquote carries the line in its sourced section under The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 4, and its separate Misattributed section does not include it (Wikiquote ↗). A search of Quote Investigator returns no article on the line — nobody has needed to contest it.
Public domain

Both printings that carry this sentence — “The Laws of Habit” in Popular Science Monthly for February 1887 and the Henry Holt edition of The Principles of Psychology in 1890 — were published in the United States long before the 1931 cutoff, so the wording is in the public domain. James wrote in English; no translation stands between him and the sentence above.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What actually goes wrong with this one

This is not a magnet quote. Nobody has tried to pin it on Churchill or Marcus Aurelius, and Wikiquote files it under James’s sourced work rather than in his misattributed pile. What goes wrong is smaller and more common: the sentence gets quoted in a wording James later revised, cut off before the part that explains it, or blurred together with a near-twin by Mark Twain.

James, revising himself variant

The maxim never changed. Its companion sentence changed twice, by James’s own hand. 1887: “be systematically ascetic or heroic … it may find you not unarmed and untrained” (Popular Science Monthly ↗). 1890: the same, but “not unnerved and untrained” (Project Gutenberg ↗). 1899: “be systematically heroic … for no other reason than its difficulty” (Talks to Teachers ↗). Quoting any one of the three is fair; presenting a blend of them as a single 1890 sentence is not.

Sourceless motivational reposts clipped

On its own the maxim is a slogan — it does not say what the exercise is. James answers that in the very next sentence: do “every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it” (Chapter IV, ‘Habit’ ↗). The point is that the effort be useless. Clipped to the first line alone, it reads as generic advice to try harder, which is close to the opposite.

Mark Twain different author

Twain opens chapter LVIII of Following the Equator (1897) with a line from ‘Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar’: “Make it a point to do something every day that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain” (Project Gutenberg ↗). That is Twain’s own maxim, not a paraphrase of James — but it sits so close to James’s second sentence that an unsourced repost of either can pass for the other.

Wikiquote spliced

Wikiquote’s version of the passage runs “… to stand the test.” straight into “So with the man who has daily inured himself …” (Wikiquote ↗). In the book, three sentences about fire insurance sit between those two, and the cut is unmarked (Project Gutenberg ↗). Anyone copying from there inherits an unsignalled ellipsis.

James wrote it, italicised it, and put it into print three times — 1887, 1890 and 1899. The attribution is not in doubt; it is only the sentence next to it that repays a look before you paste (Chapter IV, ‘Habit’ ↗).

Context

Why James put it there

James is doing something sly in this chapter. Most of it is hard physiology — habit as the literal grooving of nerve paths, the brain as a material thing obeying a material law — and then, in the last few pages, he cashes the science out as maxims you could act on this afternoon. This is the final one: since the capacity for effort behaves like a muscle and wastes like one, spend a little of it every day on nothing in particular, so that it is there when something in particular arrives.

The word carrying the weight is gratuitous. James is not recommending useful discipline. The exercise has to be pointless — “little unnecessary points,” done “for no other reason than that you would rather not do it.” And the payoff he promises is not virtue but cover: a premium paid against a fire that may never come.

Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods.

The passage kept changing for twelve years

James carried this passage with him for over a decade, and softened it as he went. In 1887 and 1890 the reader is told to be “systematically ascetic or heroic”; by the time he was addressing schoolteachers in 1899, the asceticism had quietly dropped out and only “systematically heroic” remained, with the daily task redefined from something you would rather not do to something merely difficult.

It is also worth knowing where the chapter came from. James did not write it for the book. It ran first as a stand-alone magazine article, “The Laws of Habit,” in Popular Science Monthly for February 1887, and he flagged the reuse in a footnote on the chapter’s first page. One of the most-quoted passages in American psychology started life as popular-science journalism.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Work Character Growth

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I — full textgutenberg.org

James’s 1890 book at Project Gutenberg. Chapter IV, “Habit,” carries the maxim in italics, plus the footnote crediting the 1887 magazine printing.
Chapter IV, “Habit” — with original paginationpsychclassics.yorku.ca

York University’s Classics in the History of Psychology edition, which marks pp. 126–27, where the maxim falls.
“The Laws of Habit,” Popular Science Monthly, February 1887en.wikisource.org

The first printing, transcribed from the scanned magazine. The maxim sits on p. 450 and the sentence after it reads “not unarmed and untrained.”
Talks to Teachers on Psychology (1899)gutenberg.org

James’s later reworking of the same passage for an audience of schoolteachers, with the maxim intact but its companion sentence rewritten.
William James — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Lists this line under The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 4, and keeps a separate Misattributed section that does not include it.
The Principles of Psychology — 1890 Henry Holt printingarchive.org

Internet Archive scan of the New York, H. Holt, 1890 volume, containing Chapter IV, “Habit.”

The author

About William James

William James

1842–1910 · American psychologist & philosopher, Harvard University

James taught at Harvard, where the title page of his 1890 masterwork bills him plainly as Professor of Psychology in Harvard University. The Principles of Psychology ran to what James, apologising in his own preface, called “fourteen hundred continuous pages” across two volumes — and its fourth chapter, on habit, is the part that escaped the discipline and became advice. He is the elder brother of the novelist Henry James.

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Cite this

Primary source

William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1890), chap. 4, "Habit," 126–27. First printed as "The Laws of Habit," Popular Science Monthly 30 (February 1887): 433–51, at 450.

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