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The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.

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
Question
Free
Insoluble
Grounds
Strictly
Psychological

More quotes by William James

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Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. . . . And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.
William James
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The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.
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Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
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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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.
William James
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There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
William James
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Equality is attainable as long as you are part of the majority.
William James
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Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
William James
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Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
William James
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As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird 's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.
William James
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If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have been among the most important. . . . It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially when a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the fun.
William James
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When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.
William James
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Evil is a disease and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the original complaint.
William James
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Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.
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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We must not just patch and tinker with life. We must keep renewing it. Embrace novelty and uniqueness.
William James
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We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition
William James
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Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
William James
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Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.
William James
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The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
William James