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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.

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
Differences
Different
Mysticism
Degree
Degrees
Difference

More quotes by William James

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Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity.
William James
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Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
William James
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Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.
William James
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An educated memory depends on an organized system of associations and its goodness depends on two of their peculiarities: first, on the persistency of the associations and, second, on their number.
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How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
William James
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[Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience's demands, nothing being omitted.
William James
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For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one as well as Child did.
William James
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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as.
William James
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In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
William James
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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.
William James
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Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.
William James
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Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
William James
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Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.
William James
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A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.
William James
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An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
William James
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If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. How much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged.
William James
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To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.
William James
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The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
William James
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Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
William James
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You do not sing because you're happy, you're happy because you sing.
William James