"We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions."
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Quote collection
William James quotes (page 12 of 36)
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"The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself."
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"Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is All striving is vain, will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him."
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"For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one as well as Child did."
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"Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done."
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"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
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"We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities."
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"Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity."
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"Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none."
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"When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new."
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"As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) isthe art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."
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"The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation."
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"The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse."
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"Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day."
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"A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed."
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"Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case."
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"Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources."
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"Agisci come se quel che fai, facesse la differenza. La fa!"
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"True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience"
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"Philosophy is "an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly."
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