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In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.

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
Important
Practical
Intellect
Teacher
Learning
Education
Forgetting
Forget
Remembering
Use
Programming
Remember
Practicals

More quotes by William James

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Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
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Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
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Religions have approved themselves they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.
William James
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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.
William James
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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.
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Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
William James
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Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
William James
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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.
William James
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The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
William James
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Events are influenced by our very great desires.
William James
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The perfection of rottenness.
William James
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From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: Begin with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these.
William James
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All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on.
William James
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Habit is a second nature, or rather, it is 'ten times nature'.
William James
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Act the part and you will become the part.
William James
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All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.
William James
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If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
William James
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I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
William James
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Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.
William James