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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.
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
Men
Finals
Physics
Ethics
Virtue
Lasts
Last
Experience
Truth
Final
More quotes by William James
Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
William James
Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.
William James
The unrest which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the nonexistence of this world is just as possible as its existence.
William James
The greatest discovery of the 20th Century is that our attitude of mind determines our quality of life, not circumstances.
William James
Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man.
William James
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
Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
William James
Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it
William James
Marvelous as may be the power of my dog to understand my moods, deathless as his affection and fidelity, his mental state is as unsolved a mystery to me as it was to my remotest ancestor.
William James
It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
William James
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
William James
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
William James
All religions begin with the cry Help.
William James
The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.
William James
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.
William James
All natural goods perish. Riches take wings fame is a breath love is a cheat youth and health and pleasure vanish.
William James
If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.
William James
Our theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already partial: we follow 'elegenace' or 'economy'
William James
I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.
William James
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
William James