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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
Beliefs
Rules
Belief
Action
Really

More quotes by William James

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How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young-or slender.
William James
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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
William James
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The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
William James
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Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
William James
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Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
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Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse
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History is a bath of blood.
William James
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It is as important to cultivate your silence power as your word power.
William James
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A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
William James
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Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.
William James
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
William James
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It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
William James
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Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James
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Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
William James
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On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.
William James
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Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.
William James
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Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.
William James
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True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience
William James
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A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.
William James
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Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.
William James