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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

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
Bounds
Knowledge
Science
Facts
Human
Humans

More quotes by William James

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We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
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Lay plans as if we were to be immortal.
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Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.
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Most unhappiness is caused because people listen to themselves... instead of talking to themselves.
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The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
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A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock
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We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities it is only the particular ass that does so whom we can't tolerate.
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No decision is, in itself, a decision.
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It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact.
William James
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Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
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The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
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The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
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All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride.
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Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
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Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
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.
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What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.
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Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
William James