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Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
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
Rules
Reconciling
Law
Conceptions
Science
Newly
Facts
Bind
Together
Feeds
Life
Burst
Like
Decay
Conception
Divined
More quotes by William James
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.
William James
Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
William James
Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
William James
Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality.
William James
The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.
William James
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
William James
What a teacher needs to know about psychology might almost be written on the palm of one's hand.
William James
'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
William James
Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair.
William James
In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
William James
Our theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already partial: we follow 'elegenace' or 'economy'
William James
If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.
William James
It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact.
William James
A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.
William James
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
William James
Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought.
William James
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
Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.
William James
To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
William James
I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE.
William James