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

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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse
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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
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A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
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As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
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There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.
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To change one's life: a. Start immediately b. B. Do it flamboyantly c. No exceptions Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted.
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We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
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Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
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Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
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Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
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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 deepest hunger in human beings is the desire to be appreciated.
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What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.
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The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own particular ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.
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Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
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The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.
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The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.
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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
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