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Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.

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
Religion
Men
Life
Reaction
Reactions
Total
Religious
Whatever
Upon

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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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A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.
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Truth is something that happens to an idea.
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You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.
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Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
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We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.
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Serious development of the personality begins at the closet door.
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If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
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Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.
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In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
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The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.
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The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.
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Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.
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Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.
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When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.
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As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
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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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In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.
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In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start.
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First... a new theory is attacked as absurd then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
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