Quote

Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.

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
Fire
Fires
Small
Compared
Possible
Awake
Half
Mental
Making
Physical
Use
Resources
Part
Failure
Drafts
Ought
Checked

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On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.
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To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.
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Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
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[T]here is very little difference between one person and another, but what little difference ther eis, is very important.
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The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands.
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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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In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible.
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The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
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The power to move the world is in the subconcious mind
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Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.
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Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man.
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Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
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Agisci come se quel che fai, facesse la differenza. La fa!
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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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So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
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The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
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The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience and the only fulfillment we can speak of isthe reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.
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I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.
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Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness.
William James