William James Quotes
A pioneering American psychologist and philosopher. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, the psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism.
(1842 - 1910)
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A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
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A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.
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A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
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A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
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A thing is important if anyone think it important.
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Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
[Acceptance]
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Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
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Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
[Action]
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Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
[Action]
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All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
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All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience.
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An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
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An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
[Ideas]
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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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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
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As Charles Lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them.
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Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
[Life]
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Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
[Adversity]
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Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
[Begin]
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Belief creates the actual fact.
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