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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
Selves
Creatures
Habit
Past
Self
Copiers
Imitators
Stereotyped
Imitator

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If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the as if technique.
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The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself to prompt new questions in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away.
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Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.
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Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality.
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We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
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In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.
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To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein
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But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, whilst others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper spring of human personality to conduct the task.
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Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
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The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence.
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Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.
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In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.
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Great indeed is Fear but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher ranges of men's spiritual energy.
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Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.
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What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.
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Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors.
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A thing is important if anyone think it important.
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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
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The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.
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Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
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