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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
Live
Philosophical
Life
Tomorrow
Trust
Ready
Call
Science
Truth
Today
Falsehood

More quotes by William James

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All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride.
William James
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It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
William James
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If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.
William James
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First... a new theory is attacked as absurd then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
William James
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Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
William James
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
William James
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If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. Only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.
William James
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To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
William James
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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
William James
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The first thing that intellect does with an object is to class it with something else.
William James
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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
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Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
William James
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The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.
William James
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An educated memory depends on an organized system of associations and its goodness depends on two of their peculiarities: first, on the persistency of the associations and, second, on their number.
William James
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
William James
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I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
William James
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To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
William James
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Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
William James
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In any project the important factor is your belief. Without belief, there can be no successful outcome.
William James
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Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes
William James