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If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
William James
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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Quality
Leadership
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More quotes by William James
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
William James
'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth
William James
I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.
William James
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
William James
There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
William James
Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.
William James
What holds attention determines action.
William James
Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.
William James
What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.... Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it.
William James
Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.
William James
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
William James
Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
William James
Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
William James
Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.
William James
There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
William James
Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
William James
First... a new theory is attacked as absurd then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
William James
Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
William James
You do not sing because you're happy, you're happy because you sing.
William James
In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
William James