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The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.

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
Simplicity
Science
Always
Reduce
Complexity
Aim

More quotes by William James

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Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.
William James
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We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.
William James
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Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.
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Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.
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Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.
William James
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Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
William James
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To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
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The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.
William James
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Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience they will lead him nowhere or else make false connections
William James
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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot
William James
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... no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.
William James
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The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience and the only fulfillment we can speak of isthe reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.
William James
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A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock
William James
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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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All religions begin with the cry Help.
William James
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To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
William James
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We are mere bundles of habits.
William James
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All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.
William James
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As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.
William James