Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
WILLIAM JAMESSo 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.
More William James Quotes
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We hear the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as we give it, or read in the bystander’s eyes the success or failure of our conduct.
WILLIAM JAMES -
The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
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All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish.
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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.
WILLIAM JAMES -
At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe.
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Man, biologically considered … is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own kind.
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Men’s activities are occupied into ways — in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
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Facts’ are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.
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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
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Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot
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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
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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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Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
WILLIAM JAMES