Quote

Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.

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
Mind
Occupied
Way
Striving
Things
Activities
Men
External
Strive
Activity
Turvy
Circumstances
Topsy
Ways
Grappling

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The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.
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Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
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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.
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Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought.
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Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
William James
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Act the part and you will become the part.
William James
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'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth
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An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true
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It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.
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If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
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It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to a teacher.
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Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.
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A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.
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To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
William James
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If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
William James
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To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
William James
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Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
William James
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The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
William James
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Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.
William James
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.
William James