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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.

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
Politics
Unnoticed
Society
Loose
Political
Physically
Thing
Punishment
Remain
Turned
Absolutely
Fiendish
Possible
Devised

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To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.
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Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
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'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth
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How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young-or slender.
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Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.
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Equality is attainable as long as you are part of the majority.
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Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least.
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As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
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... religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thingthat it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.
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Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.
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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
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Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.
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We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given why we should not pray. Others give reasons why we should pray. Very little is said of the reason we do pray. The reason is simple: We pray because we cannot help praying.
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No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.
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Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought.
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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.
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The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.
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But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, whilst others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper spring of human personality to conduct the task.
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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