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So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.

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
Young
Birds
Wells
Flight
Well
Sky
Take
Bird
Whole
Begin
Fluently
Children
Reading
Effortlessly
World
Read
Literacy
Learn
Worlds

More quotes by William James

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The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself to prompt new questions in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away.
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The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.
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There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.
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The work that leads to a doctor's degree is a constant temptation to sacrifice one's growth as a man to one's growth as a specialist.
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A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.
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.
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If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
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When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.
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Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction
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The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
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A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
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There are 3 rules to follow if you want to change (1) Start immediately, (2) Do it flamboyantly, (3) No exceptions.
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What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.
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You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action.
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Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
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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To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.
William James
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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.
William James
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The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
William James
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The stream of thought flows on but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.
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