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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
Make
Witness
Would
Abuse
Rearrangement
Bear
Preconceptions
Bears
Handling
Novel
Phenomena
Serious
Altogether
Science
Ignore
Way
Usual
More quotes by William James
We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves.
William James
The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.
William James
Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one
William James
The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.
William James
You may not get everything you dream about, but you will never get anything you don't dream about.
William James
Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.
William James
Man alone of all the creatures of earth can change his own pattern. Man alone is the architect of his own destiny.
William James
Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for, and is therefore right in postulating, may be enveloped in a wider order, on which she has no claim at all.
William James
History is a bath of blood.
William James
Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.
William James
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.
William James
Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
William James
We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions.
William James
Out of time we cut 'days' and 'nights', 'summers' and 'winters.' We say what, each part of the sensible continuum is, and all these abstract whats are concepts. The intelletual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the persceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
William James
To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
William James
Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
William James
...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
William James
I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.
William James
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
William James
Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
William James
