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My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.

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
Last
Firsts
First
Thing
Always
Time
Thinking
Sake
Lasts

More quotes by William James

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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.
William James
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It is as important to cultivate your silence power as your word power.
William James
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What holds attention determines action.
William James
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Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.
William James
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We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition
William James
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But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.
William James
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.
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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Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
William James
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Habit is the great flywheel of society.
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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Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for, and is therefore right in postulating, may be enveloped in a wider order, on which she has no claim at all.
William James
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The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
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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My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
William James
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The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, words, words, words, must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.
William James
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To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
William James
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To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next.
William James
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Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.
William James
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Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.
William James