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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
Word
Altar
Altars
Unknown
Cause
Causes

More quotes by William James

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The work that leads to a doctor's degree is a constant temptation to sacrifice one's growth as a man to one's growth as a specialist.
William James
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The unrest which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the nonexistence of this world is just as possible as its existence.
William James
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Out of time we cut 'days' and 'nights', 'summers' and 'winters.' We say what, each part of the sensible continuum is, and all these abstract whats are concepts. The intelletual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the persceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
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To know one thing thoroughly would be to know the universe.
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There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.
William James
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
William James
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If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
William James
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The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.
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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
William James
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It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
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Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
William James
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The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.
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The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.
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Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
William James
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We are mere bundles of habits.
William James
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Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
William James
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The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
William James
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Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.
William James
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There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
William James
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Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
William James