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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
Self
Copiers
Imitators
Stereotyped
Imitator
Selves
Creatures
Habit
Past

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When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
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That which is most personal, is most interesting.
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There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker if sad, it must not scream or curse.
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Habit is a second nature, or rather, it is 'ten times nature'.
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There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
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We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.
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The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.
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Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience they will lead him nowhere or else make false connections
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The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own particular ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.
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All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride.
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There must always be a discrepncy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing
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Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
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If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.
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Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
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From the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology.
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The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.
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Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
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The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
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