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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.

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
Stone
Block
Data
Stones
Short
Works
Sculptor
Much
Sculptors
Mind
Receives

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The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful as the case may be.
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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
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The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
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The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
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Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can. . . . The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.
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A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.
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Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
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Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
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We are mere bundles of habits.
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We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
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The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.
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I will act as if I do make a difference.
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a man does not cry because he is sad, he is sad because he cries
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The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
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It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
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The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
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When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.
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Results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are sure to float up of their own accord from a long enough daily work at a given matter.
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It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to a teacher.
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