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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

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
Use
Facts
Disbelieve
Theories
Rule
Theory
Belief

More quotes by William James

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Most unhappiness is caused because people listen to themselves... instead of talking to themselves.
William James
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Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.
William James
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Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.
William James
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... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not practically fitted countless stones 'fit' gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions 'fit' realities, and countless truths are valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.
William James
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Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
William James
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Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
William James
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a man does not cry because he is sad, he is sad because he cries
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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We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.
William James
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The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
William James
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Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience
William James
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All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.
William James
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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
William James
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Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself.
William James
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Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair.
William James
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.
William James
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We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.
William James
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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
William James
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Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.
William James
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The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.
William James