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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.

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
Philosophy
Human
Humans
Pursuits
Trivial
Sublime
Philosophical
Pursuit

More quotes by William James

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If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.
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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.
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The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.
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If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.
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To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
William James
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An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
William James
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Creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of 'Hello! thingumbob again!' ever flitted through its mind.
William James
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It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to a teacher.
William James
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The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
William James
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One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the state of their mind.
William James
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My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
William James
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The strenuous life tastes better
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Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
William James
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As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
William James
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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
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Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.
William James
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The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
William James
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There is but one indefectibly certain truth , and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.
William James
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All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.
William James
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An enormous mass of experience, both of homeopathic doctors and their patients, is invoked in favor of the efficacy of these remedies and doses.
William James