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It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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
Government
Philosophical
Anything
Everywhere
Believe
Atheism
Always
Evidence
Wrong
Upon
Atheistic
Religion
Insufficient
Everyone
Rationality
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Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
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Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
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All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
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So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end...and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.
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The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
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Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
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Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
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The unrest which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the nonexistence of this world is just as possible as its existence.
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Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him.
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Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
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When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.
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But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.
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Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is obvious. If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.
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There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
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If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.
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