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What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.

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
Vise
Grasps
Belief
Community
Individual
Comes
Whole
Believe

More quotes by William James

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So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.
William James
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I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.
William James
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A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.
William James
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I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
William James
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Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
William James
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The education of attention would be an education par excellence
William James
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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
William James
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Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.
William James
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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
William James
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The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, words, words, words, must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.
William James
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One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible.
William James
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We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
William James
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Truth is something that happens to an idea.
William James
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We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition
William James
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Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
William James
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If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have been among the most important. . . . It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially when a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the fun.
William James
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If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the as if technique.
William James
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No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed.
William James
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Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
William James
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
William James