Quote

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.

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
Nothing
Mental
Keel
Obvious
Utility
Memory
Selection
Case
Ship
Built
Ships
Cases
Ill
Memories
Occasions
Everything
Remembered

More quotes by William James

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The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
William James
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If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the as if technique.
William James
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This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.
William James
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Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.
William James
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In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied faiths, however, is, that they begin to cut each others throats too soon, and for getting on in the world and establishing a modus vivendi these pestilential refinements and reasonablenesses and moderations have to creep in.
William James
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I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
William James
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The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.
William James
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The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.
William James
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[Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience's demands, nothing being omitted.
William James
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If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.
William James
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Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes
William James
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If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
William James
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For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one as well as Child did.
William James
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The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.
William James
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To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein
William James
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Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
William James
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What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.... Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it.
William James
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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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Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
William James
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The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal 'objectivity,' as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its 'elegance,' or its congruity with our residual beliefs
William James