Quote

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.

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
Matter
Float
Enough
Floats
Work
Accord
Daily
Long
Results
Sure
Busily
Given
Voluntarily
Thought
Aimed

More quotes by William James

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Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction
William James
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True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.
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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens outthe widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread', as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage.
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There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
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We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.
William James
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This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
William James
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Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. . . . And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.
William James
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To know one thing thoroughly would be to know the universe.
William James
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Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.
William James
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One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the state of their mind.
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The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.
William James
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Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
William James
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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.
William James
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It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to a teacher.
William James
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If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.
William James
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The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
William James
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Our beliefs are really rules for action.
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Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought.
William James
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The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
William James