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When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.

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
Decision
Responsibility
Order
Dismiss
Care
Outcome
Execution
Outcomes
Reached
Absolutely

More quotes by William James

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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
William James
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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
William James
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Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.
William James
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I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
William James
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The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.
William James
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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
William James
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All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.
William James
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The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.
William James
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But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, whilst others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper spring of human personality to conduct the task.
William James
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To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
William James
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The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
William James
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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
William James
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Pluralism lets things really exist in the each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or collective-unit form is the only form that is rational.
William James
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We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.
William James
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The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
William James
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Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.
William James
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Agisci come se quel che fai, facesse la differenza. La fa!
William James
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There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual.
William James
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All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.
William James
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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
William James