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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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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Glory
Plunder
Modern
Avenue
War
Avenues
Better
Ancestors
Feel
Ancestor
Feels
Innate
Men
Expensive
Love
Trade
Inherits

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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.
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Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.
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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.
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In any project the important factor is your belief. Without belief, there can be no successful outcome.
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I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.
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Our minds thus grow in spots and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in it stains the ancient mass but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
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To spend life for something which outlasts it.
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Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
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Once you accept an idea, it's an idea whose time has come.
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You do not sing because you're happy, you're happy because you sing.
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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
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Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
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No decision is, in itself, a decision.
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What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.
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We all have a lifelong habit of inferiority to our full self...
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It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
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The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.
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General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.
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