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Wisdom is learning 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
Learning
Wisdom
Experience
Overlook
Philosophical

More quotes by William James

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As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
William James
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Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James
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The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.
William James
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The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.
William James
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Belief creates the actual fact.
William James
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To know an object is to lead to it through a context which the world provides
William James
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The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
William James
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Every claim creates an obligation.
William James
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We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities it is only the particular ass that does so whom we can't tolerate.
William James
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How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
William James
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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as.
William James
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We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given why we should not pray. Others give reasons why we should pray. Very little is said of the reason we do pray. The reason is simple: We pray because we cannot help praying.
William James
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As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
William James
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Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.
William James
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It is your friends who make your world.
William James
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The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that HE was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.
William James
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It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
William James
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This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.
William James
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Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
William James
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To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
William James