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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
Certain
Skipping
Overlook
Wise
Stage
Education
Knowing
Reading
Art
Isthe
More quotes by William James
Great indeed is Fear but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher ranges of men's spiritual energy.
William James
The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.
William James
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.
William James
We all have a lifelong habit of inferiority to our full self...
William James
The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
William James
The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.
William James
That which is most personal, is most interesting.
William James
Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.
William James
There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
William James
As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
William James
A winner's attitude: it may be difficult, but it's possible. A loser's attitude: It may be possible, but it's too difficult.
William James
Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.
William James
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.
William James
Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins
William James
The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
William James
In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
William James
Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
William James
The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.
William James
Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.
William James
The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal 'objectivity,' as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its 'elegance,' or its congruity with our residual beliefs
William James
