Quote

Man, biologically considered ... is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own kind.

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
Men
Formidable
Beasts
Prey
Beast
Considered
Indeed
Preys
Simply
Biologically
Kind
Systematically

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The first thing that intellect does with an object is to class it with something else.
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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
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Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him.
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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.
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O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.
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Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.
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Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.
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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
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The perfection of rottenness.
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The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.
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Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.
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To kill time is not murder, it's suicide.
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Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
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We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
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So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end...and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.
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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
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Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
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Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
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When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.
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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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