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The perfection of rottenness.

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
Rottenness
Sarcastic
Perfection

More quotes by William James

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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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If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
William James
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
William James
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We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
William James
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The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
William James
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As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird 's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.
William James
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True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience
William James
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Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.
William James
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Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
William James
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Pragmatism asks its usual question. Grant an idea or belief to be true, it says, what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?
William James
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I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
William James
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In its broadest term, religion says that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in rightful relations to it.
William James
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Our minds thus grow in spots and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in it stains the ancient mass but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
William James
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Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
William James
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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.
William James
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Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.
William James
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What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.
William James
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
William James
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In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain instinctive order is followed. There is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds of conception at one age, and other kinds of conception at a later age.
William James
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I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.
William James