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How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

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
Willing
Secret
Recover
Happiness
Motive
Fact
Gain
Times
Endure
Facts
Gains
Keep
Laughter
Men
Joy

More quotes by William James

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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
William James
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Individuality is founded in feeling and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.
William James
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The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed.
William James
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We are mere bundles of habits.
William James
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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.
William James
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... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really there, would be an irrational rule.
William James
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Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.
William James
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Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
William James
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A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
William James
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The power to move the world is in the subconcious mind
William James
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The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism.
William James
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Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
William James
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Intelligence is a fixed goal with variable means of achieving it.
William James
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As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.
William James
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A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
William James
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The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.
William James
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Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
William James
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Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins
William James
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Agisci come se quel che fai, facesse la differenza. La fa!
William James
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To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.
William James