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First... a new theory is attacked as absurd then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered 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
Important
Obvious
Adversaries
Discovery
Attacked
Theory
Insignificant
Seen
Claim
Science
Absurd
True
Discovered
Firsts
Claims
First
Finally
Admitted
More quotes by William James
We are mere bundles of habits.
William James
Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitement's of that day do not call forth. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. The human individual usually lives far within his limits.
William James
Equality is attainable as long as you are part of the majority.
William James
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
William James
The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
William James
...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
What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.
William James
There is but one unconditional commandment ... to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.
William James
No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
William James
To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next.
William James
Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves.
William James
General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.
William James
There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.
William James
But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.
William James
We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.
William James
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
William James
Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
William James
The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
William James
All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.
William James
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
