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Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively.

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
Literature
Habits
Action
Depend
Ideas
Several
Volitional
Firsts
Educational
Respectively
First
Habit
Coupling
Depends
Inaction
Second
Habitual
Philosophy
Stock

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Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.
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The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.
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Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
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The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.
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Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.
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In the last analysis, then, we believe that we all know and think about and talk about the same world because we believe our PERCEPTS are possessed by us in common
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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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There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker if sad, it must not scream or curse.
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To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
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We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
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How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
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Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.
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If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.
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The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.
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The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
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I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.
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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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The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist.
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The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.
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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
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