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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.

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
Term
Call
Broadly
Race
Historically
Two
Imitation
Human
Walked
Humans
Invention
Legs
Using

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To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next.
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If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.
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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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Most unhappiness is caused because people listen to themselves... instead of talking to themselves.
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It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
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Give your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
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Habit is the great flywheel of society.
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It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
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Once you accept an idea, it's an idea whose time has come.
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Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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[Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience's demands, nothing being omitted.
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Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation.
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The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.
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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
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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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Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.
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In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
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He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.
William James
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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.
William James
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Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively.
William James