Act Quote by William James

“Belief and doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubting, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing is, is continuing to act as if it were not.” quote by William James — Download Open image

““Belief and doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubting, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing is, is continuing to act as if it were not.””

William James

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Act Attitude Belief Conduct Doubt Faith Life

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Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.

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We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as…

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In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who…

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“Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and belief, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it…

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Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.

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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

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Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or…

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We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

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It is your friends who make your world.

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Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

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Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them,…

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“How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and the waves sparkling and the sea-gulls circling around Fort Wagner's ancient site. But the great earthworks and their thundering cannon, the commanders and their followers, the wild assault and repulse that for a brief space made…

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