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Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.

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
Working
Faith
Synonymous
Hypothesis

More quotes by William James

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You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.
William James
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Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.
William James
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If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.
William James
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We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could.
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.
William James
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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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To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
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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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
William James
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Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give happiness. Thomas Jefferson We never enjoy perfect happiness our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.
William James
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The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that HE was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.
William James
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Once a decision is reached, stop worrying and start working.
William James
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The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
William James
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The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself hopeless as a psychologist.
William James
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I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.
William James
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From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreigness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy (a benevolent Universe) means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust.
William James
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Our beliefs are really rules for action.
William James
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An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true
William James
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Nature in her unfathomable designs had mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably together and determine each other's being but how or why, no mortal may ever know.
William James
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An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
William James