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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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Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
William James
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O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.
William James
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The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism.
William James
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Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.
William James
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[T]here is very little difference between one person and another, but what little difference ther eis, is very important.
William James
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The deepest hunger in human beings is the desire to be appreciated.
William James
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Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
William James
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When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.
William James
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How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
William James
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
William James
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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.
William James
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Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
William James
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Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give happiness. Thomas Jefferson We never enjoy perfect happiness our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.
William James
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Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.
William James
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It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.
William James
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The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.
William James
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A great idea goes through three stages on its way to acceptance: 1) it is dismissed as nonsense, 2) it is acknowledged as true, but insignificant, 3) finally, it is seen to be important, but not really anything new.
William James
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It would probably astound each of them beyond measure to be let into his neighbor's mind and to find how different the scenery there was from that in his own.
William James
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Habit is a second nature, or rather, it is 'ten times nature'.
William James