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I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

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
Lose
Loses
Pretension
Doubt
Wholly
Rather
Disorder
Fear
Lover
Truth
Possess
Lovers
Already

More quotes by William James

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The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
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The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.
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The difference between objective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context solely.
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If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.
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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
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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.
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To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
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I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives
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The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.
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Let anyone try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or to attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
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Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.
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There is no being capable of a spiritual life who does not have within him a jungle. Where the wolf constantly HOWLS and the OBSCENE bird of night chatters endlessly.
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The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist.
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The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown for religious ideals.
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Belief creates the actual fact.
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Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it
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A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
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How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
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Serious development of the personality begins at the closet door.
William James