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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
Twenties
Shall
Five
Lives
Ideas
Men
Practically
Gained
Twenty
More quotes by William James
The war-function has grasped us so far but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden.
William James
Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.
William James
Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
William James
Great indeed is Fear but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher ranges of men's spiritual energy.
William James
Man can change his life simply by changing his attitude.
William James
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can. . . . The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.
William James
The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.
William James
Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.
William James
What holds attention determines action.
William James
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
In its broadest term, religion says that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in rightful relations to it.
William James
I don't sing because I'm happy I'm happy because I sing.
William James
We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.
William James
The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.
William James
All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride.
William James
We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
William James
Out of time we cut 'days' and 'nights', 'summers' and 'winters.' We say what, each part of the sensible continuum is, and all these abstract whats are concepts. The intelletual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the persceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
William James
A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.
William James
Knowledge about life is one thing effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
William James
Science can tell us what exists but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.
William James
