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The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

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
Necks
Foot
Devil
Feet
Upon
Keep
Long
Richer
World
Neck

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We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
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The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
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Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.
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Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
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Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
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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.
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A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
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The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
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To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as.
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With no attempt there can be no failure with no failure no humiliation.
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Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life
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Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for a better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities.
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We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.
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Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.
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Truth in our ideas means their power to work.
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If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. Only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.
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No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
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A man of sense is never discouraged by difficulties he redoubles his industry and his diligence, he perseveres and infallibly prevails at last.
William James
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Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.
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