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

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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.
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Science can tell us what exists but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.
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What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
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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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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
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Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.
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To know an object is to lead to it through a context which the world provides
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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.
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The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
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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.
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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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So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation.
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The strenuous life tastes better
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There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.
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No one sees further into a generalization than his own knowledge of detail extends.
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Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.
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Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
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The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself to prompt new questions in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away.
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To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
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