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The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James
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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Knowing
Educational
Knowledge
Motivation
Simple
Positive
Art
Teaching
Learning
Overlooking
Wise
Overlook
Vision
Indifference
Wisdom
Neglect
More quotes by William James
Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
William James
When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.
William James
Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
William James
If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
William James
The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party.
William James
What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.
William James
Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for, and is therefore right in postulating, may be enveloped in a wider order, on which she has no claim at all.
William James
Pragmatism asks its usual question. Grant an idea or belief to be true, it says, what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?
William James
Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.
William James
We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
William James
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
William James
A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and of zological evolution as expounded by Mr. Darwin on the other.
William James
Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.
William James
Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.
William James
With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
William James
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
William James
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
William James
For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
William James
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
William James
In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible.
William James
