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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.

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
Attend
Moment
Moments
Reality

More quotes by William James

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The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
William James
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The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.
William James
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What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.... Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it.
William James
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When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
William James
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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.
William James
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The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.
William James
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But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.
William James
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
William James
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I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.
William James
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Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.
William James
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Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
William James
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Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively.
William James
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Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system
William James
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As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.
William James
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In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain instinctive order is followed. There is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds of conception at one age, and other kinds of conception at a later age.
William James
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The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
William James
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Time itself comes in drops.
William James
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There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood bu those who hear it.
William James
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Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience
William James
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Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
William James