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The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.

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
Attention
Inattention
Science
Ignoring
Mind
Factor
Vital
Factors
Mental
Function
Progress

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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
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It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
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One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible.
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Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none.
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The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
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The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
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There is no being capable of a spiritual life who does not have within him a jungle. Where the wolf constantly HOWLS and the OBSCENE bird of night chatters endlessly.
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To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
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The power to move the world is in the subconcious mind
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If it works, it's true.
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Serious development of the personality begins at the closet door.
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All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.
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There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.
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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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Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.
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If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
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Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
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The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
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Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
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Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.
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