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Pragmatism asks its usual question. Grant an idea or belief to be true, it says, what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?

William James

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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
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Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
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More quotes by William James

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To know one thing thoroughly would be to know the universe.
William James
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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
William James
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The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
William James
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When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.
William James
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As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.
William James
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Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual.
William James
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Intellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents but has no power of re-determining its character, for that is already given.
William James
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Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.
William James
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With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
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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Equality is attainable as long as you are part of the majority.
William James
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The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
William James
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Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
William James
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Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.
William James
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Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
William James
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In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
William James
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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
William James
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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.
William James
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It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
William James
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The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party.
William James