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True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.

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
Human
Stability
Humans
Sensible
Well
Directly
Conceptual
Useful
Verbal
Lead
Intercourse
True
Flowing
Ideas
Consistency
Wells
Quarters

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The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
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Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
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The difference between objective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context solely.
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There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
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We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
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Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
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When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.
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Our minds thus grow in spots and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in it stains the ancient mass but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
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How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
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Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
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In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible.
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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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The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
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A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.
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Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
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In any project the important factor is your belief. Without belief, there can be no successful outcome.
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Give your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
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Truth is something that happens to an idea.
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This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.
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