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Instinct leads, logic does but follow.

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
Intuition
Leads
Logic
Instinct
Follow
Doe

More quotes by William James

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The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.
William James
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A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
William James
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Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.
William James
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Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
William James
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The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.
William James
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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
William James
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Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
William James
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Our minds thus grow in spots and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in it stains the ancient mass but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
William James
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The difference between objective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context solely.
William James
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Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have so carefully posited 'reality' ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist.
William James
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Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins
William James
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... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really there, would be an irrational rule.
William James
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Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.
William James
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So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end...and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.
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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How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
William James
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As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
William James
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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.
William James
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There is no being capable of a spiritual life who does not have within him a jungle. Where the wolf constantly HOWLS and the OBSCENE bird of night chatters endlessly.
William James
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Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.
William James