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The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.

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
Right
Way
Thinking
Expedient
Briefly
Behaving
True

More quotes by William James

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Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.
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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So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
William James
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Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.
William James
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The war-function has grasped us so far but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden.
William James
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An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physiologically incomplete... Its motor consequences are what clinch it.
William James
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Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
William James
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Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein.
William James
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I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.
William James
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The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out.
William James
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The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
William James
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I will act as if I do make a difference.
William James
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We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
William James
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The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
William James
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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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Religions have approved themselves they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.
William James
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Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses power of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.
William James
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... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences.
William James
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... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.
William James
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I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
William James