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Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.

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
Takes
Educational
Literature
Field
Place
Fields
Ideas
Number
Volition
Depends
Conflicting
Consciousness
Systems
Numbers
Complexes
Philosophy
Complex

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All natural goods perish. Riches take wings fame is a breath love is a cheat youth and health and pleasure vanish.
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The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
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Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man.
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When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.
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Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
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Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation.
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Belief creates the actual fact.
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We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.
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Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses power of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.
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a man does not cry because he is sad, he is sad because he cries
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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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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
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Knowledge about life is one thing effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
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There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
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The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence.
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Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
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