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Since you make evil or good by your own thoughts, it is your ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.

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
Principal
Concern
Prove
Thoughts
Since
Evil
Proves
Make
Good
Ruling

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A man may not achieve everything he has dreamed, but he will never achieve anything great without having dreamed it first.
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Religions have approved themselves they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.
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Smitten as we are with the vision of social righteousness, a God indifferent to everything but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual favorites, lacks an essential element of largeness.
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Man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educabilityand in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy, and acquisitiveness reinforce.
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All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
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It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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Time itself comes in drops.
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Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.
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In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.
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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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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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To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein
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We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
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An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
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There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that constitute our inner life.
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Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.
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An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total.
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Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.
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Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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