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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

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Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
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There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
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The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
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For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one as well as Child did.
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Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual.
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The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.
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An enormous mass of experience, both of homeopathic doctors and their patients, is invoked in favor of the efficacy of these remedies and doses.
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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.
William James
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Every claim creates an obligation.
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So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
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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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Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
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We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given why we should not pray. Others give reasons why we should pray. Very little is said of the reason we do pray. The reason is simple: We pray because we cannot help praying.
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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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The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party.
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An educated memory depends on an organized system of associations and its goodness depends on two of their peculiarities: first, on the persistency of the associations and, second, on their number.
William James
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'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
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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.
William James
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The difference between objective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context solely.
William James
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Truth in our ideas means their power to work.
William James