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Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.

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
Age
Freedom
True
Identical
Bondage
Necessity
Understood
Highest

More quotes by William James

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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.
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We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.
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It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
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All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.
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Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
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[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
William James
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The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
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The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.
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Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.
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.
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Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
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Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction
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Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
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Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.
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To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
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No decision is, in itself, a decision.
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Life feels like a real fight - as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem.
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Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.
William James
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
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All religions begin with the cry Help.
William James