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The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.

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
Firsts
First
Lecture
Lectures
Psychology
Gave
Heard
Ever

More quotes by William James

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The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.
William James
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The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
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The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
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Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
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When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
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The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.
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Nature in her unfathomable designs had mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably together and determine each other's being but how or why, no mortal may ever know.
William James
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I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
William James
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Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.
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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Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
William James
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All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.
William James
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We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.
William James
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Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
William James
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We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions.
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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In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.
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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Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.
William James
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Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.
William James