Our beliefs are really rules for action.
WILLIAM JAMESTo give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
More William James Quotes
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You may not get everything you dream about, but you will never get anything you don’t dream about.
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Footnotes — little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
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Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don’t want to do
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Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.
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Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.
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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.
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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.
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Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.
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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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The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
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The ‘I think’ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‘I breathe’ which actually does accompany them.
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Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.
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So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end…and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.
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There is but one unconditional commandment … to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.
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Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
WILLIAM JAMES






