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All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

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
Gods
Scientific
Ideals
Philosophic
Altars
Unknown

More quotes by 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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To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
William James
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James
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Individuality is founded in feeling and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.
William James
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If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
William James
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Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.
William James
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Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one
William James
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Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.
William James
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That which is most personal, is most interesting.
William James
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The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.
William James
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It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
William James
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Individuality is founded in feeling
William James
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What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.... Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it.
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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If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
William James
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A man may not achieve everything he has dreamed, but he will never achieve anything great without having dreamed it first.
William James
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Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
William James
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Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.
William James
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
William James
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I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.
William James