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Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for a better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities.

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
Ought
Colleges
Better
Lit
Kind
Relish
Men
Mediocrity
Appetite
Lasting
Loss
College
Mediocrities

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A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock
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The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
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When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
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Science can tell us what exists but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.
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Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
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The power to move the world is in the subconcious mind
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...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.
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We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.
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The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.
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Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.
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We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
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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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To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.
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We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.
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It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
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The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
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Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.
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It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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The most natively interesting object to a man is his own personal self and its fortunes. We accordingly see that the moment a thing becomes connected with the fortunes of the self, it forthwith becomes an interesting thing.
William James