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The deepest hunger in human beings is the desire to be appreciated.

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
Friendship
Beings
Desire
Human
Humans
Appreciated
Deepest
Hunger

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Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
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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.
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Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse
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The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
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It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.
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One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.
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Religions have approved themselves they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.
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You may not get everything you dream about, but you will never get anything you don't dream about.
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Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
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The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
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Since you make evil or good by your own thoughts, it is your ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.
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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.
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Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.
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Man alone of all the creatures of earth can change his own pattern. Man alone is the architect of his own destiny.
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We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves.
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So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
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The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
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Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.
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For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.
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We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
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