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Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.

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
Everything
Good
Demanded
Fact
Facts

More quotes by William James

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Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
William James
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The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
William James
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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
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Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
William James
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To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.
William James
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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
William James
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There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.
William James
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In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.
William James
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But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.
William James
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The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.
William James
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Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
William James
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
William James
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The good we do today becomes the happiness of tomorrow.
William James
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It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
William James
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A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.
William James
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Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
William James
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Smitten as we are with the vision of social righteousness, a God indifferent to everything but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual favorites, lacks an essential element of largeness.
William James
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The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.
William James
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Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.
William James
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As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird 's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.
William James