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Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.

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
Circle
Physically
Circles
Potential
Whether
Sith
Live
Restricted
People
Intellectually
Morally

More quotes by William James

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It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call something there, more deep and more general than any of the special and particular senses by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed.
William James
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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
William James
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Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair.
William James
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This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.
William James
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
William James
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Man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educabilityand in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy, and acquisitiveness reinforce.
William James
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Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity.
William James
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With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
William James
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Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself.
William James
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The first thing that intellect does with an object is to class it with something else.
William James
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Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.
William James
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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
William James
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A man of sense is never discouraged by difficulties he redoubles his industry and his diligence, he perseveres and infallibly prevails at last.
William James
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Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.
William James
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With no attempt there can be no failure with no failure no humiliation.
William James
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Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second.
William James
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Intelligence is a fixed goal with variable means of achieving it.
William James
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It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.
William James
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The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal 'objectivity,' as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its 'elegance,' or its congruity with our residual beliefs
William James
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.
William James