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There is but one indefectibly certain truth , and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.

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
Standing
Consciousness
Present
Truth
Certain
Scepticism
Phenomenon
Leaves
Exists

More quotes by William James

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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.
William James
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To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.
William James
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Pragmatism asks its usual question. Grant an idea or belief to be true, it says, what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?
William James
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Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
William James
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The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.
William James
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Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
William James
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A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
William James
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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
William James
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
William James
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To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
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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Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will.
William James
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To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein
William James
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Truth in our ideas means their power to work.
William James
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We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
William James
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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
William James
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A man may not achieve everything he has dreamed, but he will never achieve anything great without having dreamed it first.
William James
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Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation.
William James
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When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.
William James
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The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
William James