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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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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Higher
Voluntary
Attending
Brief
Nevertheless
Lower
Fitful
Acts
Momentous
Critical
Destinies
Destiny
Determining
More quotes by William James
There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.
William James
So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.
William James
If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the as if technique.
William James
To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
William James
Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
William James
There is no being capable of a spiritual life who does not have within him a jungle. Where the wolf constantly HOWLS and the OBSCENE bird of night chatters endlessly.
William James
To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
William James
Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.
William James
We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.
William James
A great idea goes through three stages on its way to acceptance: 1) it is dismissed as nonsense, 2) it is acknowledged as true, but insignificant, 3) finally, it is seen to be important, but not really anything new.
William James
To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.
William James
Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils both to think, to feel, and to do.
William James
It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.
William James
A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
William James
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
William James
Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.
William James
There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood bu those who hear it.
William James
Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.
William James
The word 'cause' is an altar to an unknown god.
William James
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
William James
