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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.

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
Life
Attitude
Greatness
Attitudes
Greatest
Generation
Outer
Happiness
Aspect
Wrestling
Lives
Minds
Aspects
Change
Beings
Addiction
Human
Revolution
Changing
Humans
Positive
Discovery
Mind
Generations
Inner

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A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
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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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We need only in cold blood to act as if the thing in question were real and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real.
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
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Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
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Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second.
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Our beliefs are really rules for action.
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The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself to prompt new questions in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away.
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It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
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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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A man may not achieve everything he has dreamed, but he will never achieve anything great without having dreamed it first.
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Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
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In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain instinctive order is followed. There is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds of conception at one age, and other kinds of conception at a later age.
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A great idea goes through three stages on its way to acceptance: 1) it is dismissed as nonsense, 2) it is acknowledged as true, but insignificant, 3) finally, it is seen to be important, but not really anything new.
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Habit is the great flywheel of society.
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Lay plans as if we were to be immortal.
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The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
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One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.
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Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him.
William James