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The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

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
Lives
Ideas
Men
Practically
Gained
Twenty
Twenties
Shall
Five

More quotes by William James

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The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.
William James
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We must not just patch and tinker with life. We must keep renewing it. Embrace novelty and uniqueness.
William James
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Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
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Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
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All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.
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No decision is, in itself, a decision.
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He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.
William James
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But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.
William James
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Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
William James
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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.
William James
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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.
William James
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If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
William James
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I don't sing because I'm happy I'm happy because I sing.
William James
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I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.
William James
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The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
William James
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The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.
William James
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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
William James
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Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.
William James
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
William James
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The word 'cause' is an altar to an unknown god.
William James