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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
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Idea
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Actual
Experiential
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Says
False
Pragmatism
Truth
Differences
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Experiences
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Anyone
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Cash
Life
Values
Difference
Usual

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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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Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.
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We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
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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.
William James
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I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.
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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
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Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism.
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It would probably astound each of them beyond measure to be let into his neighbor's mind and to find how different the scenery there was from that in his own.
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A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock
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Man, biologically considered ... is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own kind.
William James
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True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience
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How many of us persist in a precipitate course which, but for a moment of heedlessness we might never have entered upon, simply because we hate to change our minds.
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Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
William James
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Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.
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I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
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You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action.
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It is as important to cultivate your silence power as your word power.
William James
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The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
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Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
William James
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The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands.
William James