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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.

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
Power
Excel
Men
Geniuses
Sustained
Commonly
Believed
Genius
Attention
Making
Attentive

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The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
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The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
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We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves.
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What holds attention determines action.
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Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
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What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.
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Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
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The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse.
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Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.
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Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.
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The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.
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Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
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If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.
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The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
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Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes
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Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.
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But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.
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Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
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One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.
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