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

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The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
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Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.
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Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have so carefully posited 'reality' ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist.
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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
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Man alone of all the creatures of earth can change his own pattern. Man alone is the architect of his own destiny.
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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
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If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
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Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
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The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.
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First... a new theory is attacked as absurd then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
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Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
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Effort is a measure of a Man.
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As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.
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If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the as if technique.
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The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
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New habits can be launched.
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I don't sing because I'm happy I'm happy because I sing.
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