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I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.

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
Thing
Relied
Contradict
Philosophers
Philosopher
Philosophical
Philosophy

More quotes by William James

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A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock
William James
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Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
William James
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We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.
William James
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An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
William James
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Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
William James
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Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
William James
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One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the state of their mind.
William James
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The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.
William James
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O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.
William James
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The perfection of rottenness.
William James
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Pluralism lets things really exist in the each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or collective-unit form is the only form that is rational.
William James
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One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible.
William James
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Lets take full advantage of this discovery
William James
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We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.
William James
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When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
William James
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
William James
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Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
William James
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The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence.
William James
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
William James