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So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.

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
Self
World
Entirely
Depends
Feeling
Feelings
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More quotes by William James

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A thing is important if anyone think it important.
William James
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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
William James
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If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when, gradually or suddenly, it passes away and we are fresher than before!
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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.
William James
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Truth in our ideas means their power to work.
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The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.
William James
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... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.
William James
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.
William James
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... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences.
William James
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Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
William James
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I will act as if I do make a difference.
William James
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Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself.
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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As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.
William James
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Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.
William James
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Great indeed is Fear but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher ranges of men's spiritual energy.
William James
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What a teacher needs to know about psychology might almost be written on the palm of one's hand.
William James
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The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.
William James
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Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
William James
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The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.
William James