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A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.

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
Dance
Humor
Common
Sense
House
Dancer
Dancing

More quotes by William James

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Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have so carefully posited 'reality' ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist.
William James
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In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
William James
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.
William James
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Intellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents but has no power of re-determining its character, for that is already given.
William James
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Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second.
William James
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A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
William James
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I am, myself, a very poor visualizer and find that I can seldom call to mind even a single letter of the alphabet in purely retinal terms. I must trace the letter by running my mental eye over its contour in order that the image of it shall leave any distinctness at all.
William James
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Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.
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.
William James
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Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
William James
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To spend life for something which outlasts it.
William James
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Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
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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Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.
William James
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Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
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 thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.
William James
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It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.
William James
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There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.
William James
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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