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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.

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
Still
Issues
Certified
Mean
Doubt
Theoretically
Something
Causes
Readiness
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Concerning
Belief
Prosperous
Faith
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Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity.
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The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.
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There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
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A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
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To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
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[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
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It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
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Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to keep by force of mere inertia.
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Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.
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My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
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Every claim creates an obligation.
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Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.
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We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
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Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
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Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
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... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences.
William James
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The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
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I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE.
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Individuality is founded in feeling and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.
William James