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

More quotes by William James

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Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
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There is a voice inside which speaks and says, This is the real me!
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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.
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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.
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If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when, gradually or suddenly, it passes away and we are fresher than before!
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Habit is a second nature, or rather, it is 'ten times nature'.
William James
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Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
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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.
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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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A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.
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Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
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There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
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Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.
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To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
William James
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To spend life for something which outlasts it.
William James
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Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.
William James
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Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity.
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We don't laugh because we're happy - we're happy because we laugh.
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A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
William James