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The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed

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
Lonely
Richly
Feel
Positively
Feels
Feds
Thinker
Admiration
Rational
Worthy
University
Furthered

More quotes by William James

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Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.
William James
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I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
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Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
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Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
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Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.
William James
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... religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thingthat it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.
William James
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I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)
William James
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An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
William James
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Lay plans as if we were to be immortal.
William James
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Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
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If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when, gradually or suddenly, it passes away and we are fresher than before!
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The deepest hunger in human beings is the desire to be appreciated.
William James
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
William James
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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
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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Truth happens to an idea
William James
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The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.
William James
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Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them.
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Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.
William James
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Serious development of the personality begins at the closet door.
William James