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Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.

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
Difficulty
Habit
Two
Reason
Every
Something

More quotes by William James

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The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.
William James
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Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us.
William James
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You may not get everything you dream about, but you will never get anything you don't dream about.
William James
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The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
William James
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Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling.
William James
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The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
William James
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The first thing that intellect does with an object is to class it with something else.
William James
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As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird 's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.
William James
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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
William James
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A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.
William James
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea... The islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
William James
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Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.
William James
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There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.
William James
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We don't laugh because we're happy - we're happy because we laugh.
William James
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Give your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
William James
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Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes
William James
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Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
William James
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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.
William James
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Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James
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The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.
William James