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A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.

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
Emotion
Human
Humans
Nonentity
Disembodied
Purely

More quotes by William James

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Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is obvious. If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.
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Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse
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Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.
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The stream of thought flows on but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.
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It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
William James
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Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
William James
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Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.
William James
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O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.
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All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
William James
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In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.
William James
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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
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In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
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Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
William James
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Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
William James
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You can't out-perform your self-image.
William James
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The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself hopeless as a psychologist.
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Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.
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We all have a lifelong habit of inferiority to our full self...
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Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.
William James