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Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man.

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
Facts
Goods
Heart
Lays
Men
False
Supreme
Infinite
Belief
Consults
Fact
Correction
Science
Corrections

More quotes by William James

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There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.
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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But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, whilst others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper spring of human personality to conduct the task.
William James
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The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.
William James
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To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
William James
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A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and of zological evolution as expounded by Mr. Darwin on the other.
William James
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The strenuous life tastes better
William James
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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as.
William James
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.
William James
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Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
William James
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Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.
William James
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Once you accept an idea, it's an idea whose time has come.
William James
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It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact.
William James
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As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
William James
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Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.
William James
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It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.
William James
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The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
William James
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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.
William James
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
William James
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To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.
William James