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Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.

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
Trial
Trials
Genius
Democracy
Upon
Stills
Bulwark
Still
Civic
People
Civics

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I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.
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The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
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The squalid cash interpretation put on the word success — is our national disease.
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My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
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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.
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No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed.
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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.
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Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
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One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the state of their mind.
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Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
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Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
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For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.
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Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience they will lead him nowhere or else make false connections
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Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual.
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The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, words, words, words, must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.
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As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) isthe art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
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Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes spiritualism means theaffirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.
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Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.
William James
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I don't sing because I'm happy I'm happy because I sing.
William James
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The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.
William James