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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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The greatest discovery of the 20th Century is that our attitude of mind determines our quality of life, not circumstances.
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...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
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Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.
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Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.
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Philosophy is an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.
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Once you accept an idea, it's an idea whose time has come.
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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.
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A man may not achieve everything he has dreamed, but he will never achieve anything great without having dreamed it first.
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
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Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
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Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true.
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The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
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No decision is, in itself, a decision.
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Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
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The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.
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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
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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.
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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
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To spend life for something which outlasts it.
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