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Our beliefs are really rules for action.

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
Belief
Action
Really
Beliefs
Rules

More quotes by 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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In business for yourself, not by yourself.
William James
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...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.
William James
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It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call something there, more deep and more general than any of the special and particular senses by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed.
William James
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It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
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 consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein
William James
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It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
William James
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Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness.
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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Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.
William James
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I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.
William James
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To know an object is to lead to it through a context which the world provides
William James
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Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.
William James
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All religions begin with the cry Help.
William James
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Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse
William James
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Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought.
William James
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Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
William James
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The stream of thought flows on but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.
William James
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A man of sense is never discouraged by difficulties he redoubles his industry and his diligence, he perseveres and infallibly prevails at last.
William James