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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
Theism
Hypothesis
God
Works
Principles
Word
Sense
Satisfactorily
True
Widest

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True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.
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We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
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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.
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Truth in our ideas means their power to work.
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The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
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Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
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A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
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To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.
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This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
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What a teacher needs to know about psychology might almost be written on the palm of one's hand.
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There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
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So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation.
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The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.
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The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
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Time itself comes in drops.
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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.
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With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
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Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
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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.
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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
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