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We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.

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
May
Library
Book
Hearing
Dog
Conversation
Inkling
Meaning
Libraries
Seeing
Cats
Books
Dogs
Universe
Cat

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The greatest discovery of the 20th Century is that our attitude of mind determines our quality of life, not circumstances.
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We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
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The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
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Pluralism lets things really exist in the each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or collective-unit form is the only form that is rational.
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The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time
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Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.
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The good we do today becomes the happiness of tomorrow.
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I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives
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Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.
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Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university.
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We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.
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We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
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Truth happens to an idea
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
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Equality is attainable as long as you are part of the majority.
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Serious development of the personality begins at the closet door.
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It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to a teacher.
William James
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Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have so carefully posited 'reality' ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist.
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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.
William James