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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
Leadership
Already
Quality

More quotes by William James

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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
William James
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A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.
William James
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The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience and the only fulfillment we can speak of isthe reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.
William James
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The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.
William James
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... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not practically fitted countless stones 'fit' gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions 'fit' realities, and countless truths are valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.
William James
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In business for yourself, not by yourself.
William James
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Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
William James
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The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
William James
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Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively.
William James
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Act the part and you will become the part.
William James
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Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain.
William James
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When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.
William James
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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
William James
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The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
William James
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We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
William James
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Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.
William James
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Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.
William James
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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
William James
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The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
William James
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The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.
William James