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You do not sing because you're happy, you're happy because you sing.

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
Sing
Happy

More quotes by William James

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We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.
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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But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.
William James
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Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
William James
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With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
William James
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Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
William James
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When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.
William James
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Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.
William James
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The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands.
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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Marvelous as may be the power of my dog to understand my moods, deathless as his affection and fidelity, his mental state is as unsolved a mystery to me as it was to my remotest ancestor.
William James
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If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.
William James
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...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
William James
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Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
William James
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If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.
William James
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I don't sing because I'm happy I'm happy because I sing.
William James
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The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.
William James
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The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism.
William James
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The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
William James
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The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.
William James