Quote

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

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
Fact
Refuse
Lives
Credit
Facts
Pass
Truth
Thoughts
Part
Nobody
Refuses
Nothing
Challenges
Bank
Long
System
Beliefs
Belief
Notes

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Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university.
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The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience and the only fulfillment we can speak of isthe reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.
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You can't out-perform your self-image.
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If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.
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Since you make evil or good by your own thoughts, it is your ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.
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I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.
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Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
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Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
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The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful as the case may be.
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.
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Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
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Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will.
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The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time
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I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.
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I will act as if I do make a difference.
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To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
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Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.
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Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do
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Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.
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The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.
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