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Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.

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
Boiling
Formulas
Correct
Present
Making
Experience
Way

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The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
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Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.
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To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is.
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Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
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You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.
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Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
William James
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The strenuous life tastes better
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Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.
William James
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Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
William James
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Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James
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If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
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Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
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If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.
William James
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An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: There is very little difference between one man and another but what little there is, is very important. This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.
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'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
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Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
William James
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Wisdom is learning what to overlook.
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Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.
William James
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Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair.
William James