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Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

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
Facts
Pass
Truth
Thoughts
Part
Nobody
Refuses
Nothing
Challenges
Bank
Long
System
Beliefs
Belief
Notes
Fact
Refuse
Lives
Credit

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Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
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To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education.
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Every claim creates an obligation.
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An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: There is very little difference between one man and another but what little there is, is very important. This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.
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The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
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Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
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No one sees further into a generalization than his own knowledge of detail extends.
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Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
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Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation.
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Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions.
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It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.
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The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
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The education of attention would be an education par excellence
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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
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Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life
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Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.
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A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and of zological evolution as expounded by Mr. Darwin on the other.
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We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.
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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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