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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
Bundles
Habits
Mere
Habit

More quotes by William James

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To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.
William James
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Act the part and you will become the part.
William James
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A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
William James
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Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors.
William James
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A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.
William James
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can. . . . The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.
William James
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Most unhappiness is caused because people listen to themselves... instead of talking to themselves.
William James
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Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
William James
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... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not practically fitted countless stones 'fit' gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions 'fit' realities, and countless truths are valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.
William James
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.
William James
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Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction
William James
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I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.
William James
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.
William James
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Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.
William James
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[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
William James
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Creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of 'Hello! thingumbob again!' ever flitted through its mind.
William James
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The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.
William James
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With no attempt there can be no failure with no failure no humiliation.
William James
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Man alone of all the creatures of earth can change his own pattern. Man alone is the architect of his own destiny.
William James
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Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.
William James