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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.

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
Men
Philosophical
Philosophy
Opinion
Within
Form
May
Whole
Pretend
Work
Opinions

More quotes by William James

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It is as important to cultivate your silence power as your word power.
William James
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I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.
William James
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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.
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.
William James
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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
William James
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The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.
William James
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Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.
William James
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Effort is a measure of a Man.
William James
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
William James
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Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
William James
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How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young-or slender.
William James
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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
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Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.
William James
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Science can tell us what exists but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.
William James
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As Charles Lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them.
William James
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Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
William James
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Lets take full advantage of this discovery
William James
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Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality.
William James
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The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
William James
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Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
William James