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How many of us persist in a precipitate course which, but for a moment of heedlessness we might never have entered upon, simply because we hate to change our minds.

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
Change
Minds
Might
Simply
Many
Courses
Mind
Course
Never
Upon
Precipitate
Moment
Entered
Hate
Persist
Moments
Psychological

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Intelligence is a fixed goal with variable means of achieving it.
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The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows.
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The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out.
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
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The education of attention would be an education par excellence
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A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
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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.
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To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
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The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
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The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
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The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time
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All religions begin with the cry Help.
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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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Habit is the great flywheel of society.
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Pluralism lets things really exist in the each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or collective-unit form is the only form that is rational.
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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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It is as important to cultivate your silence power as your word power.
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The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
William James
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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.
William James