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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.

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
Struggle
Jews
Days
Jew
Utterances
Hours
Triumph
Captivity
Come
Brings
Solomon
Need
Bible
Excite
Needs
Hour
Utterance
Inspire
Pessimistic
Glory
Void

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Intelligence is a fixed goal with variable means of achieving it.
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Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
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The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
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Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.
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Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.
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To know an object is to lead to it through a context which the world provides
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Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life
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We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
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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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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
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The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
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An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physiologically incomplete... Its motor consequences are what clinch it.
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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
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We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could.
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Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them.
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Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.
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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.
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The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.
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You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.
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