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The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.

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
Needs
Principle
Work
Exist
Substantial
Prove
Superfluous
Consciousness
Metaphysics
Principles
Hypothesis
States
Theology
May
Psychology
Soul
Unity

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What a teacher needs to know about psychology might almost be written on the palm of one's hand.
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The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.
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An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true
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Most unhappiness is caused because people listen to themselves... instead of talking to themselves.
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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
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All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.
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Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.
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Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.
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When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
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The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
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To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
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We are mere bundles of habits.
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
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We hear the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as we give it, or read in the bystander's eyes the success or failure of our conduct.
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Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
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Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.
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Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.
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Truth is something that happens to an idea.
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The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, words, words, words, must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.
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