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The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.

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
Education
Great
Thing
Ally
Make
Allies
Nervous
Instead
System
Enemy

More quotes by William James

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What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.... Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it.
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It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
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That which is most personal, is most interesting.
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Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
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When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.
William James
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Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
William James
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Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will.
William James
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Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves.
William James
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James
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Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.
William James
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To kill time is not murder, it's suicide.
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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The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that HE was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.
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The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.
William James
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Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
William James
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea... The islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
William James
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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
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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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On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.
William James
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When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.
William James