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As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.

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
Humans
Challenges
Arguments
Hear
Sympathy
Justice
Appeals
Politics
Dealing
Lying
Folly
Crocodiles
Political
Reasonable
Magnanimity
Truth
Argument
Persuasion
Human
Worse
Misunderstood

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The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
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Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
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Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.
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Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
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Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.
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It is as important to cultivate your silence power as your word power.
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'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
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Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.
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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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For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one as well as Child did.
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Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
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The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
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What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.
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It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
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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The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
William James
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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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Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
William James
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Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.
William James
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The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James