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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
Mind
Receives
Stone
Block
Data
Stones
Short
Works
Sculptor
Much
Sculptors

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Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.
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History is a bath of blood.
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It is as important to cultivate your silence power as your word power.
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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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The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.
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Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will.
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An educated memory depends on an organized system of associations and its goodness depends on two of their peculiarities: first, on the persistency of the associations and, second, on their number.
William James
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All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.
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Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.
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If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
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To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
William James
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
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... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.
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One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible.
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Pluralism lets things really exist in the each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or collective-unit form is the only form that is rational.
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It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to a teacher.
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The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows.
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The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.
William James
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It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
William James
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Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
William James