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Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
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
Human
Walked
Humans
Invention
Legs
Using
Term
Call
Broadly
Race
Historically
Two
Imitation
More quotes by William James
The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
William James
The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself to prompt new questions in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away.
William James
The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.
William James
As Charles Lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them.
William James
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.
William James
...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
William James
Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
William James
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
William James
If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
William James
The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
William James
The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
William James
Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
William James
Once you accept an idea, it's an idea whose time has come.
William James
Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
William James
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
William James
Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
William James
The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that HE was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.
William James
Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.
William James
An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: There is very little difference between one man and another but what little there is, is very important. This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.
William James
Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
William James
