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Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?

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
Libraries
Cats
Dogs
Cat
Library
Dog
Universe
May

More quotes by William James

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Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.
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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Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
William James
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Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.
William James
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We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
William James
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Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
William James
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The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
William James
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It is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit.
William James
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One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.
William James
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Nature in her unfathomable designs had mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably together and determine each other's being but how or why, no mortal may ever know.
William James
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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
William James
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To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.
William James
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It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
William James
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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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A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.
William James
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No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
William James
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All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.
William James
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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.
William James
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Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
William James
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How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
William James