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Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.

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
Facts
Beliefs
Belief
Attention
Fact

More quotes by William James

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We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
William James
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Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
William James
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The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.
William James
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It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call something there, more deep and more general than any of the special and particular senses by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed.
William James
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The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.
William James
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If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.
William James
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All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.
William James
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I will act as if I do make a difference.
William James
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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.
William James
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The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees.
William James
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Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.
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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The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.
William James
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I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives
William James
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The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
William James
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Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
William James
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When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
William James
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The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
William James
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How many of us persist in a precipitate course which, but for a moment of heedlessness we might never have entered upon, simply because we hate to change our minds.
William James
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Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
William James