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The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

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
Cold
Faculty
Criticisms
Hours
Dues
Sway
Facts
Beer
Stimulate
Nature
Alcohol
Faculties
Power
Hour
Crushed
Earth
Criticism
Mystical
Human
Usually
Sober
Humans
Mankind
Dry
Unquestionably

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As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) isthe art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
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In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied faiths, however, is, that they begin to cut each others throats too soon, and for getting on in the world and establishing a modus vivendi these pestilential refinements and reasonablenesses and moderations have to creep in.
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From the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology.
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I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.
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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.
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In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
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...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.
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I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)
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Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life
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A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
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Philosophy is an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.
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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.
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Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins
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The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, words, words, words, must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.
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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.
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The perfection of rottenness.
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In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
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The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows.
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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
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