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On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.

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
Widest
True
Theism
Hypothesis
God
Works
Principles
Word
Satisfactorily
Sense

More quotes by William James

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Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
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We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves.
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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
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We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.
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Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction
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In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.
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The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.
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Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.
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... no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.
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To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
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Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.
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Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
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The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.
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The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.
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Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off subjection.
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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.
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How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
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Our theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already partial: we follow 'elegenace' or 'economy'
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Pragmatism asks its usual question. Grant an idea or belief to be true, it says, what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?
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The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.
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