Quote

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein.

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
Walks
Keeps
Saves
Repulsive
Alone
Hardest
Wheel
Ordinances
Within
Enormous
Agent
Uprising
Poor
Conservative
Wheels
Tread
Society
Thus
Agents
Therein
Science
Fortune
Precious
Deserted
Children
Brought
Bounds
Prevents
Uprisings
Life
Habit
Envy
Envious
Ordinance

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Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.
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The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that HE was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.
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All religions begin with the cry Help.
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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
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To change one's life: a. Start immediately b. B. Do it flamboyantly c. No exceptions Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted.
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Truth in our ideas means their power to work.
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The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
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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.
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The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
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Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse
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Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
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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.
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If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. Only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.
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In any project the important factor is your belief. Without belief, there can be no successful outcome.
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There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
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Results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are sure to float up of their own accord from a long enough daily work at a given matter.
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Act the part and you will become the part.
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An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total.
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The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
William James