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Act the part and you will become the part.

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
Focus
Action
Become
Part

More quotes by William James

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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
William James
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It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
William James
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Habit is the great flywheel of society.
William James
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There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual.
William James
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An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true
William James
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It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact.
William James
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The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
William James
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The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.
William James
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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
William James
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Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world.
William James
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True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.
William James
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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
William James
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The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.
William James
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The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
William James
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A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.
William James
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An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physiologically incomplete... Its motor consequences are what clinch it.
William James
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Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
William James
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The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.
William James
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The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
William James
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Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. . . . And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.
William James