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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.

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
Conservatives
Extreme
Extremes
Belief
Matter

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Lay plans as if we were to be immortal.
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Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.
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Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
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Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
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Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it
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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.
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No one sees further into a generalization than his own knowledge of detail extends.
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Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
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To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.
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Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.
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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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If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
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Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
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The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
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Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair.
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If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.
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So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation.
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Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.
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When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
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