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The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.

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
Ever
Senses
Mind
Medicine
Soma
Mental
Modification
General
Accompanied
Philosophy
Bodily
Law
Occurs
Change
Followed
Body
Psychology

More quotes by 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
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The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.
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Our theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already partial: we follow 'elegenace' or 'economy'
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The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.
William James
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There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.
William James
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To know one thing thoroughly would be to know the universe.
William James
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If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
William James
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Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.
William James
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Individuality is founded in feeling
William James
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It is your friends who make your world.
William James
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There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
William James
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If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.
William James
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The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
William James
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The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.
William James
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.
William James
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...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.
William James
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Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
William James
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You do not sing because you're happy, you're happy because you sing.
William James
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Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.
William James
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To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
William James