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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.

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
Fate
Evil
Good
Never
Fates
Undone
Spinning

More quotes by William James

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Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
William James
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Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.
William James
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Nature in her unfathomable designs had mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably together and determine each other's being but how or why, no mortal may ever know.
William James
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Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us.
William James
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Few people have definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character in the universe, and of the inadequacy of fully to match it [to] the peculiar systems that he knows.
William James
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
William James
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Choose a self and stand by it.
William James
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It would probably astound each of them beyond measure to be let into his neighbor's mind and to find how different the scenery there was from that in his own.
William James
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Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
William James
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The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.
William James
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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
William James
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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
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.
William James
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We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.
William James
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The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.
William James
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How many of us persist in a precipitate course which, but for a moment of heedlessness we might never have entered upon, simply because we hate to change our minds.
William James
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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.
William James
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a man does not cry because he is sad, he is sad because he cries
William James
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Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.
William James
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We don't laugh because we're happy - we're happy because we laugh.
William James