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...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.

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
Serious
Altogether
Science
Ignore
Way
Usual
Make
Witness
Would
Abuse
Rearrangement
Bear
Preconceptions
Bears
Handling
Novel
Phenomena

More quotes by William James

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Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. . . . And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.
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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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
William James
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Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
William James
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If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. How much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged.
William James
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Habit is the great flywheel of society.
William James
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Since you make evil or good by your own thoughts, it is your ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.
William James
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As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.
William James
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Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
William James
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The good we do today becomes the happiness of tomorrow.
William James
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For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.
William James
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Habit is a second nature, or rather, it is 'ten times nature'.
William James
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Our beliefs are really rules for action.
William James
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How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
William James
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The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
William James
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To change one's life: a. Start immediately b. B. Do it flamboyantly c. No exceptions Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted.
William James
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A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.
William James
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Belief creates the actual fact.
William James
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
William James
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Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
William James