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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
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
Clearly
Effort
Means
Nothing
Mean
Think
Unusually
Thinking
Obstinate
Metaphysics
More quotes by William James
We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can the slaughterhouses are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer, cleaner and better than the world that really is.
William James
If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.
William James
As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird 's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.
William James
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
Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.
William James
Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
William James
Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university.
William James
The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
William James
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
William James
Evil is a disease and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the original complaint.
William James
The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
William James
Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions.
William James
Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual.
William James
True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.
William James
The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
William James
There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual.
William James
Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
William James
We all have a lifelong habit of inferiority to our full self...
William James
When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.
William James
The good we do today becomes the happiness of tomorrow.
William James
