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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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An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: There is very little difference between one man and another but what little there is, is very important. This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.
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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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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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.
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 general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.
William James
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Man can change his life simply by changing his attitude.
William James
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'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
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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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
William James
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What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
William James
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From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: Begin with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these.
William James
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Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
William James
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An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
William James
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There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.
William James
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Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.
William James
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The education of attention would be an education par excellence
William James
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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
William James
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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens outthe widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread', as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage.
William James
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Effort is a measure of a Man.
William James