Quote

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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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Keep
Speaking
Cannot
Intelligence
Must
Terms
Like
Cost
Wall
Alive
Term
Chrysalis
Universe
Engendered

More quotes by William James

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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
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We need only in cold blood to act as if the thing in question were real and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real.
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There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
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In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.
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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.
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Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.
William James
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We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
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This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
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A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
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Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.
William James
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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.
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
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The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.
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A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.
William James
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No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
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The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one.
William James
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Act the part and you will become the part.
William James
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The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
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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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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
William James