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Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.

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
True
Namely
Happens
Event
Truth
Events
Ideas
Becomes
Made
Fact
Verifying
Idea
Verity
Process
Validity
Facts
Valid

More quotes by William James

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The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
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Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do
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We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
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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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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.
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We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
William James
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Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
William James
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The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
William James
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The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
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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To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
William James
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...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
William James
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Give your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
William James
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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
William James
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In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
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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The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer--and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars.
William James
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The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
William James
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Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
William James
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The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.
William James