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Intellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents but has no power of re-determining its character, for that is already given.

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
Given
Contents
Power
Determining
Complete
Character
Duty
Mind
Already
World
Belief
Upon
Ascertaining
Comes
Intellectualism

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We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.
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Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
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The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
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The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed.
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Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
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So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way.
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Every claim creates an obligation.
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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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Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.
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To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is.
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The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
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If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.
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Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.
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We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.
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Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling.
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Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
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[T]here is very little difference between one person and another, but what little difference ther eis, is very important.
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Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
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Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
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No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
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