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

More quotes by William James

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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.
William James
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The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.
William James
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The same is true of Love, and the instinctive desire to please those whom we love. The teacher who succeeds in getting herself loved by the pupils will obtain results which one of a more forbidding temperament finds it impossible to secure.
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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We are mere bundles of habits.
William James
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The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.
William James
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So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way.
William James
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My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
William James
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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.
William James
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When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
William James
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Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.
William James
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
William James
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There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that constitute our inner life.
William James
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The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.
William James
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Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
William James
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My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.
William James
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The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
William James
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No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
William James
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If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
William James
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The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
William James