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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.

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
Seems
Acquaintance
Littles
Root
Little
Distinction
Matter
Hearing
Important
Roots
Men
Difference
Differences
Unlearned
Another
Carpenter

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No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.
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So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
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To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein
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A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.
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Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
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The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one.
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In any project the important factor is your belief. Without belief, there can be no successful outcome.
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Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
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The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
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The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
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Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality.
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Individuality is founded in feeling and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.
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Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.
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Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.
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Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought.
William James
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To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
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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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I am, myself, a very poor visualizer and find that I can seldom call to mind even a single letter of the alphabet in purely retinal terms. I must trace the letter by running my mental eye over its contour in order that the image of it shall leave any distinctness at all.
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A thing is important if anyone think it important.
William James
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To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
William James