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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.

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
Means
Thought
Mean
Communicating
Imperfect
Expensive
Discovered
Communicate
Language

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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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The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.
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Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university.
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Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
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Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.
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But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.
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Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
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Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
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I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)
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Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.
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It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.
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[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
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All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
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The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
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We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
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We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves.
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Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
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The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.
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The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.
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