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I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of mans pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top. You need take no notice of these ebullitions of spleen, which are probably quite unintelligible to anyone but myself.
-William James
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The most violent revolutions in an individuals beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and ones own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity.
-William James
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Action(s)
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If you want a trait, act as if you already have the trait.
-William James
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I will act as if what I do makes a difference.
-William James
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Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.
-William James
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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.
-William James
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Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
-William James
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Adversity
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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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Age
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How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
-William James
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Alcohol/Alcoholism
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If merely feeling good could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
-William James
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The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.
-William James
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Anger
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We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.
-William James
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Appreciation
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The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
-William James
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Attitude
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Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
-William James
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The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
-William James
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It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
-William James
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Authors & Writing
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Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
-William James
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Belief
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Belief creates the actual fact.
-William James
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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
-William James
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Bravery
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Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its string can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it...
-William James
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Chance
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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.
-William James
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Character
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I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.
-William James
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It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
-William James
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Choice
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When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that in itself is a choice.
-William James
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If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained... it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will.
-William James
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Books by and about William James