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The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.

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
Last
Philosophical
Shortest
Feel
Seriously
Philosophic
Feels
Concern
Concerns
Mind
Minds
Shallow
Things
Truly
Superior
Men
Views
Superiors
Simply
Absolutes
Lasts
Absolute
Overlapping

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No one sees further into a generalization than his own knowledge of detail extends.
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Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.
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An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
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If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
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It is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit.
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You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action.
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A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
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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.
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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
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If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.
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Belief creates the actual fact.
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The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.
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Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes
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There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.
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You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.
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The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism.
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Once you accept an idea, it's an idea whose time has come.
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To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.
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Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.
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The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.
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