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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 desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.
William James
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To know one thing thoroughly would be to know the universe.
William James
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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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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
William James
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[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
William James
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The perfection of rottenness.
William James
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When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.
William James
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea... The islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
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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The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.
William James
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Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.
William James
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The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.
William James
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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
William James
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Great indeed is Fear but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher ranges of men's spiritual energy.
William James
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Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one
William James
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The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.
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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We can act as if there were a God feel as if we were free consider Nature as if she were full of special designs lay plans as if we were to be immortal and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.
William James
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True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.
William James
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The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one.
William James