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The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown for religious ideals.

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
Highest
Bravery
Trust
Devotion
Religious
Flight
Religion
Patience
Nature
Charity
Human
Spread
Humans
Wings
Flown
Ideals
Flights

More quotes by William James

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You can't out-perform your self-image.
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Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
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Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
William James
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In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.
William James
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To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein
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The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
William James
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The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence.
William James
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Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.
William James
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First... a new theory is attacked as absurd then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
William James
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But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.
William James
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To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
William James
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I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
William James
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Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.
William James
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It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
William James
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Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual.
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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In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start.
William James
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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.
William James
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With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
William James