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Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.

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
World
Shaped
Decide
Truly
View
Views
Hear

More quotes by William James

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Life feels like a real fight - as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem.
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To spend life for something which outlasts it.
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Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
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The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.
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The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands.
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Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses power of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.
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Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.
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An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total.
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Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to keep by force of mere inertia.
William James
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Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
William James
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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
William James
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A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.
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It is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit.
William James
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Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.
William James
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The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
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Since you make evil or good by your own thoughts, it is your ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.
William James
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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.
William James
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Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.
William James
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Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.
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Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.
William James