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I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE.

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
Kind
Kinds
Believe
Source
Impossible
Phenomena
Belief
Skepticism
Religion
Investigation
Science
Deception
Nature
Compare
Certain
Fixed

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If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the as if technique.
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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.
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Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.
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Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience they will lead him nowhere or else make false connections
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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea... The islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
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There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
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'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth
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Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
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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 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 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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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
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Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.
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Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual.
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There is but one indefectibly certain truth , and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
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The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.
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To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
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To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.
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