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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

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My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
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Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
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Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
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The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.
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Humanism . . . is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight.
William James
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But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.
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Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.
William James
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Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.
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There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
William James
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You can't out-perform your self-image.
William James
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He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.
William James
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Agisci come se quel che fai, facesse la differenza. La fa!
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Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for, and is therefore right in postulating, may be enveloped in a wider order, on which she has no claim at all.
William James
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Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
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.
William James
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If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.
William James
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The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
William James