Quote

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

More quotes by William James

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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.
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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot
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I will act as if I do make a difference.
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Our minds thus grow in spots and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in it stains the ancient mass but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
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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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But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.
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My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.
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To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is.
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The word 'cause' is an altar to an unknown god.
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Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.
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A man of sense is never discouraged by difficulties he redoubles his industry and his diligence, he perseveres and infallibly prevails at last.
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The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party.
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The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
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A thing is important if anyone think it important.
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
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You may not get everything you dream about, but you will never get anything you don't dream about.
William James
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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
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We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
William James
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Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
William James
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Events are influenced by our very great desires.
William James