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Our beliefs are really rules for action.

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
Really
Beliefs
Rules
Belief
Action

More quotes by William James

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A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.
William James
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You do not sing because you're happy, you're happy because you sing.
William James
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How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
William James
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If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
William James
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It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
William James
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... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really there, would be an irrational rule.
William James
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Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
William James
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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.
William James
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There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
William James
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The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed
William James
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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.
William James
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Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.
William James
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James
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We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.
William James
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Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
William James
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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
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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All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.
William James
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Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.
William James
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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.
William James