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In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain instinctive order is followed. There is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds of conception at one age, and other kinds of conception at a later age.

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
Age
Conception
Process
Tendencies
Order
Native
Assimilate
Certain
Educational
Conceptions
Kind
Kinds
Instinctive
Later
Acquiring
Philosophy
Tendency
Literature
Followed

More quotes by William James

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If you can change your mind, you can change your life.
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Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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There must always be a discrepncy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing
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Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
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Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
William James
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Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.
William James
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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.
William James
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Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
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The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.
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The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.
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We need only in cold blood to act as if the thing in question were real and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real.
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You can't out-perform your self-image.
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Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
William James
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.
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When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
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Belief creates the actual fact.
William James
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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, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein.
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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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Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
William James
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea... The islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
William James