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To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.

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
Conscious
Simply
Known
Means
Mean
Reported
Added
Awareness

More quotes by William James

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The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.
William James
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Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
William James
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...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.
William James
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... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.
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Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain.
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[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
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The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful as the case may be.
William James
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Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.
William James
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Our minds thus grow in spots and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in it stains the ancient mass but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
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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The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.
William James
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
William James
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The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
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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Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
William James
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Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
William James
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Choose a self and stand by it.
William James
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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.
William James
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I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
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.
William James