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We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves.

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
Stereotyped
Imitator
Selves
Creatures
Habit
Past
Self
Copiers
Imitators

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It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
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The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.
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It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
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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.
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Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
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Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.
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If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.
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Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
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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Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
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Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
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It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.
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An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
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The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.
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A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.
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Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.
William James
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I am, myself, a very poor visualizer and find that I can seldom call to mind even a single letter of the alphabet in purely retinal terms. I must trace the letter by running my mental eye over its contour in order that the image of it shall leave any distinctness at all.
William James
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The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
William James
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I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.
William James
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... religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thingthat it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.
William James