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The word 'cause' is an altar to an unknown god.

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
Unknown
Cause
Causes
Word
Altar
Altars

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Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience
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If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.
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Science can tell us what exists but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.
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Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
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The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed.
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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.
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Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
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The most natively interesting object to a man is his own personal self and its fortunes. We accordingly see that the moment a thing becomes connected with the fortunes of the self, it forthwith becomes an interesting thing.
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea... The islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
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Belief creates the actual fact.
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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
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The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.
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The perfection of rottenness.
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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.
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Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
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To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
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But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.
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So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
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The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
William James