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A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.

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
Idea
Dismissed
Inspirational
Trivial
Dream
Condemned
Change
Ridiculous
Ideas
Finally
Firsts
Becomes
First
Vision
Everybody

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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.
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The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.
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Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction
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It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to a teacher.
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We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities it is only the particular ass that does so whom we can't tolerate.
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It would probably astound each of them beyond measure to be let into his neighbor's mind and to find how different the scenery there was from that in his own.
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Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.
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Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.
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The education of attention would be an education par excellence
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Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.
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Humanism . . . is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight.
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There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
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If you can change your mind, you can change your life.
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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 man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.
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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
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Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.
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There is no being capable of a spiritual life who does not have within him a jungle. Where the wolf constantly HOWLS and the OBSCENE bird of night chatters endlessly.
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Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.
William James