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We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

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
Today
Falsehood
Live
Philosophical
Life
Tomorrow
Trust
Ready
Call
Science
Truth

More quotes by William James

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History is a bath of blood.
William James
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Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
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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The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer--and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars.
William James
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Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.
William James
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For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.
William James
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Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
William James
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The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.
William James
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The difference between objective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context solely.
William James
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The difference between the first and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition -- it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind -- yet what miles away in the point of preciousness!
William James
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Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
William James
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Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.
William James
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The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
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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The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out.
William James
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Few people have definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character in the universe, and of the inadequacy of fully to match it [to] the peculiar systems that he knows.
William James
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Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.
William James
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The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time
William James
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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
William James
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The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
William James