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To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

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
Directly
Experienced
Admit
Radical
Empiricism
Neither
Constructions
Elements
Exclude
Must
Construction
Element

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The power to move the world is in the subconcious mind
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The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself hopeless as a psychologist.
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Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
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Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.
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There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.
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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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It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact.
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Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
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Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.
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Let anyone try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or to attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
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Wisdom is learning what to overlook.
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I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
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We can act as if there were a God feel as if we were free consider Nature as if she were full of special designs lay plans as if we were to be immortal and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.
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In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible.
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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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What holds attention determines action.
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What a teacher needs to know about psychology might almost be written on the palm of one's hand.
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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.
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It would probably astound each of them beyond measure to be let into his neighbor's mind and to find how different the scenery there was from that in his own.
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Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.
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