Quote

As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!

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
Trying
Celebrate
Rule
Fiction
Reading
Book
Hurling
Need
Feathers
Hard
Target
Needs
Resistance

More quotes by William James

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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
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First... a new theory is attacked as absurd then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
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How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
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Man lives for science as well as bread.
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Intelligence is a fixed goal with variable means of achieving it.
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Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
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Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.
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To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education.
William James
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Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him.
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It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
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Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.
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The deepest hunger in human beings is the desire to be appreciated.
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The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.
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In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.
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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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What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.
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The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
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Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
William James
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You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.
William James
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It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
William James