Quote

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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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
States
Smile
Take
Humor
Mind
Philosophy
Good
Takes
Always
Talk
State
Philosophic
Nature
Maintain
Seems
Seriously

More quotes by William James

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When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
William James
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The first thing that intellect does with an object is to class it with something else.
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Religions have approved themselves they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.
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Smitten as we are with the vision of social righteousness, a God indifferent to everything but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual favorites, lacks an essential element of largeness.
William James
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So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end...and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.
William James
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I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
William James
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Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
William James
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Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us.
William James
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Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.
William James
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Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
William James
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If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.
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... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not practically fitted countless stones 'fit' gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions 'fit' realities, and countless truths are valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.
William James
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Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.
William James
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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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You can't out-perform your self-image.
William James
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The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands.
William James
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To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
William James
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Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.
William James
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If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
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Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
William James