Quote

Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.

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
Makes
Confidence
Art
Soon
Saves
Back
Teaching
Psychology
Wells
Theory
Gain
Well
Respect
Gains
Believe
Mistake
Mistakes
Practice
Using
Clear
Method

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The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
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Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least.
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Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.
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What holds attention determines action.
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If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.
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So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
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We must not just patch and tinker with life. We must keep renewing it. Embrace novelty and uniqueness.
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When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.
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For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.
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The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
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A man of sense is never discouraged by difficulties he redoubles his industry and his diligence, he perseveres and infallibly prevails at last.
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If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. Only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.
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I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.
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The good we do today becomes the happiness of tomorrow.
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We are mere bundles of habits.
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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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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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My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
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Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.
William James
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There is but one unconditional commandment ... to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.
William James