Quote

Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.

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
Truth
Among
Emerge
Simply
Reveal
Create
Indifferent
Belief
Truths
Start
Beliefs
Terminate
Word
Add
Indefinitely
Facts
Function
Dip
True
Forward
Meanwhile

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The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
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Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.
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The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
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There are 3 rules to follow if you want to change (1) Start immediately, (2) Do it flamboyantly, (3) No exceptions.
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Effort is a measure of a Man.
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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
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Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.
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I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.
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The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party.
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To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
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Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them.
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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.
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The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
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Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.
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All religions begin with the cry Help.
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The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence.
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If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
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Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
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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.
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