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No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

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
Every
Full
Maxims
Good
Taken
Uplifting
Success
Sentiments
Opportunity
Concrete
Character
Possess
May
Entirely
Unaffected
Better
Remain
Reservoir
Matter
Advantage
Reservoirs

More quotes by William James

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Creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of 'Hello! thingumbob again!' ever flitted through its mind.
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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
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General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.
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But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, whilst others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper spring of human personality to conduct the task.
William James
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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.
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Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.
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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.
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The work that leads to a doctor's degree is a constant temptation to sacrifice one's growth as a man to one's growth as a specialist.
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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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What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.... Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it.
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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
William James
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'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
William James
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The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
William James
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Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.
William James
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The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.
William James
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We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.
William James
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If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
William James
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The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
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To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
William James
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Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
William James