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Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.

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
Never
Agree
Outward
Present
Properly
Millions
Notice
Interest
Enter
Experience
Shape
Selective
Order
Senses
Attend
Without
Chaos
Utter
Mind
Shapes
Items

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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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On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
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We must not just patch and tinker with life. We must keep renewing it. Embrace novelty and uniqueness.
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... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences.
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Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism.
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The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.
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My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
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The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
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The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
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Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
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It is your friends who make your world.
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Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.
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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.
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Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
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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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