Quote

If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.

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
Better
Private
Feels
Fight
Real
Game
Something
Games
Life
Fighting
Withdraw
Like
Success
Eternally
Universe
Theatrical
May
Gained

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Act the part and you will become the part.
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Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
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The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
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Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.
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In the last analysis, then, we believe that we all know and think about and talk about the same world because we believe our PERCEPTS are possessed by us in common
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
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Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
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The stream of thought flows on but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.
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There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
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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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Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one
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Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
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The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.
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Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.
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Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.
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Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism.
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In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
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All religions begin with the cry Help.
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