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The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.

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
Awareness
Genius
Overlook
Philosophical
Essence

More quotes by 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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Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
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We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.
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In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.
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The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
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But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, whilst others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper spring of human personality to conduct the task.
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The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.
William James
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Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
William James
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Equality is attainable as long as you are part of the majority.
William James
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Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
William James
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Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least.
William James
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The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism.
William James
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Act the part and you will become the part.
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Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse
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In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.
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To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.
William James
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Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.
William James
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea... The islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
William James
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Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
William James
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The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
William James