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As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) isthe art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

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
Overlook
Wise
Stage
Education
Knowing
Reading
Isthe
Art
Certain
Skipping

More quotes by William James

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The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
William James
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From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: Begin with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these.
William James
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... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.
William James
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To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.
William James
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Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.
William James
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The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
William James
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For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.
William James
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There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood bu those who hear it.
William James
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Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.
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.
William James
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New habits can be launched.
William James
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There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.
William James
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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
William James
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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
William James
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Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
William James
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The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.
William James
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I am, myself, a very poor visualizer and find that I can seldom call to mind even a single letter of the alphabet in purely retinal terms. I must trace the letter by running my mental eye over its contour in order that the image of it shall leave any distinctness at all.
William James
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can. . . . The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.
William James
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Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
William James
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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
William James