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Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be 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
Also
Theism
Believe
Measured
Necessarily
Since
Belief
Religion
Action
True
Forbids

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Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
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Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university.
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
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In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.
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All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
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There is but one unconditional commandment ... to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.
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Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
William James
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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, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein.
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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
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With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
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So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
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If it works, it's true.
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You do not sing because you're happy, you're happy because you sing.
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[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
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Individuality is founded in feeling and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.
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For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.
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Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.
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The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.
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Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.
William James
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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.
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