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We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

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
Life
Unendurable
Cling
Doomed
Philosophical
Fate
Find
Even

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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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Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.
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It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.
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Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
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You can't out-perform your self-image.
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The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out.
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If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when, gradually or suddenly, it passes away and we are fresher than before!
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It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.
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Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.
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Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
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Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
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A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
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'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth
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This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
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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.
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The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.
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Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.
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Intelligence is a fixed goal with variable means of achieving it.
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