Quote

If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.

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
Show
Crows
White
Mustn
Wish
Crow
Black
Upset
Shows
Seek
Enough
Prove
Single
Law

More quotes by William James

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The war-function has grasped us so far but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden.
William James
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Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.
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The deepest hunger in human beings is the desire to be appreciated.
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The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.
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Time itself comes in drops.
William James
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The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one.
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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The same is true of Love, and the instinctive desire to please those whom we love. The teacher who succeeds in getting herself loved by the pupils will obtain results which one of a more forbidding temperament finds it impossible to secure.
William James
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If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have been among the most important. . . . It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially when a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the fun.
William James
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Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
William James
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The first thing that intellect does with an object is to class it with something else.
William James
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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
William James
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The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
William James
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Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.
William James
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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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Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
William James
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The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.
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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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
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We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.
William James