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I don't sing because I'm happy I'm happy because I sing.

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
Philosophical
Sing
Happiness
Happy
Music

More quotes by William James

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Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.
William James
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Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
William James
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The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed
William James
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In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
William James
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
William James
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From the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology.
William James
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Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.
William James
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The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
William James
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Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
William James
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The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful as the case may be.
William James
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... religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thingthat it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.
William James
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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.
William James
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
William James
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James
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A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
William James
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You can't out-perform your self-image.
William James
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The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.
William James
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So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation.
William James
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There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that constitute our inner life.
William James
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The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.
William James