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We are mere bundles of habits.

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
Mere
Habit
Bundles
Habits

More quotes by William James

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To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next.
William James
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James
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The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.
William James
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I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
William James
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Evil is a disease and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the original complaint.
William James
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Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation.
William James
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New habits can be launched.
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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As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
William James
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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as.
William James
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My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
William James
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The perfection of rottenness.
William James
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Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.
William James
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In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.
William James
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If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.
William James
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The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
William James
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How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young-or slender.
William James
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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
William James
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No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
William James
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The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.
William James