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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
Means
Nothing
Mean
Unusually
Think
Obstinate
Thinking
Metaphysics
Clearly
Effort

More quotes by William James

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So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.
William James
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Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.
William James
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Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.
William James
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Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
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So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way.
William James
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If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
William James
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To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
William James
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Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
William James
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The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.
William James
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There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood bu those who hear it.
William James
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The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
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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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
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We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.
William James
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An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true
William James
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The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
William James
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...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
William James
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Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
William James
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Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.
William James
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A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
William James