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We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.

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
Example
Advising
Others
Shrink
Nature
Passionately
Human
Shrinks
Humans
Extreme
Extremes
Follow
Proud

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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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Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves.
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The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.
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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
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An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: There is very little difference between one man and another but what little there is, is very important. This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.
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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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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.
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The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.
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The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
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There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.
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Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.
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Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
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If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.
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Most unhappiness is caused because people listen to themselves... instead of talking to themselves.
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When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
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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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Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
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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