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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

More quotes by William James

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The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.
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As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
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We don't laugh because we're happy - we're happy because we laugh.
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Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for a better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities.
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Lay plans as if we were to be immortal.
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The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
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We must not just patch and tinker with life. We must keep renewing it. Embrace novelty and uniqueness.
William James
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One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.
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Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.
William James
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The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself hopeless as a psychologist.
William James
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Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness.
William James
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In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
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We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.
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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There is but one indefectibly certain truth , and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.
William James
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You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.
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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If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the as if technique.
William James
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There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
William James
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Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.
William James