Quote

The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer--and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars.

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
Designer
Design
Question
Study
Whether
Nature
Particulars
Real
Revealed
World
Idle

More quotes by William James

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Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.
William James
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Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
William James
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Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
William James
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I will act as if I do make a difference.
William James
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Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.
William James
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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.
William James
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There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that constitute our inner life.
William James
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That which is most personal, is most interesting.
William James
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We must not just patch and tinker with life. We must keep renewing it. Embrace novelty and uniqueness.
William James
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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
William James
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The greatest discovery of the 20th Century is that our attitude of mind determines our quality of life, not circumstances.
William James
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The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience and the only fulfillment we can speak of isthe reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.
William James
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Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity.
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.
William James
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
William James
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Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
William James
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Choose a self and stand by it.
William James
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Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.
William James
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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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I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.
William James