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What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.

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
Whole
Believe
Vise
Grasps
Belief
Community
Individual
Comes

More quotes by William James

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The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.
William James
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...These healers...my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories....But their facts are patent and startling and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity.
William James
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Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him.
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Habit is a second nature, or rather, it is 'ten times nature'.
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Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
William James
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The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
William James
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Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.
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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Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
William James
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Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
William James
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The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
William James
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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
William James
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We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
William James
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Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
William James
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Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.
William James
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We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could.
William James
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James
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Man alone of all the creatures of earth can change his own pattern. Man alone is the architect of his own destiny.
William James
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Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.
William James
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Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
William James