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Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.

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
Authority
Science
Assuredly
Accounts

More quotes by William James

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Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
William James
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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
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The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
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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To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.
William James
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Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
William James
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... no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.
William James
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When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.
William James
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Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.
William James
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James
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The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
William James
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The power to move the world is in the subconcious mind
William James
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There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.
William James
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Man lives for science as well as bread.
William James
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Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism.
William James
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Belief creates the actual fact.
William James
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Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.
William James
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Man, biologically considered ... is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own kind.
William James
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To know an object is to lead to it through a context which the world provides
William James
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O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.
William James