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Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.

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
Lying
Ninety
Night
Possibly
Rising
Nine
Activity
Habit
Automatic
Hundred
Habitual
Morning
Purely

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Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.
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Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.
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The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party.
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I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives
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Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
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No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
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So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end...and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.
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The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal 'objectivity,' as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its 'elegance,' or its congruity with our residual beliefs
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Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
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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.
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If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.
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Lets take full advantage of this discovery
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The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that HE was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.
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The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.
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Knowledge about life is one thing effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
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Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
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Creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of 'Hello! thingumbob again!' ever flitted through its mind.
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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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You can't out-perform your self-image.
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James