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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

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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
Greatest
Dogmatize
Left
Popes
Like
Infallible
Instincts
Pope
Reflection
Instinct
Among

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Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.
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We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.
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We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities it is only the particular ass that does so whom we can't tolerate.
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Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least.
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The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience and the only fulfillment we can speak of isthe reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.
William James
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Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.
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There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
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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Serious development of the personality begins at the closet door.
William James
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In any project the important factor is your belief. Without belief, there can be no successful outcome.
William James
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General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.
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If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have been among the most important. . . . It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially when a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the fun.
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The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.
William James
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Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
William James
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It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to a teacher.
William James
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We are mere bundles of habits.
William James
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We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.
William James
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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
William James
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The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.
William James
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No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
William James