Quote

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

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The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
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Choose a self and stand by it.
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Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
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Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
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The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
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Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
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Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.
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The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.
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An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true
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If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
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In any project the important factor is your belief. Without belief, there can be no successful outcome.
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.
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The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.
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In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible.
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To know an object is to lead to it through a context which the world provides
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All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.
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There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
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As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) isthe art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
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Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.
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