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Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.

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
Belief
Outcome
Success
Venture
Thing
Outcomes
Believe
Entrepreneur
Confidence
Assures
Beginning
Undertaking
Decision
Undertakings
Successful
Doubtful

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True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience
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The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
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Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
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I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
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No decision is, in itself, a decision.
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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
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An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
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To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.
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Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
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Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for, and is therefore right in postulating, may be enveloped in a wider order, on which she has no claim at all.
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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
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No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
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Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.
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The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
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Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.
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Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them.
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Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.
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If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
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