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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
Five
Lives
Ideas
Men
Practically
Gained
Twenty
Twenties
Shall

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You can't out-perform your self-image.
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What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.
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You do not sing because you're happy, you're happy because you sing.
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A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.
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Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: Begin with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these.
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It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
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If you can change your mind, you can change your life.
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Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.
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Few people have definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character in the universe, and of the inadequacy of fully to match it [to] the peculiar systems that he knows.
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For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one as well as Child did.
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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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Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.
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Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses power of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.
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Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.
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It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
William James
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The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.
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Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.
William James
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What a teacher needs to know about psychology might almost be written on the palm of one's hand.
William James
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Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
William James