Quote

... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really there, would be an irrational rule.

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
Truth
Acknowledging
Certain
Irrational
Kind
Prevent
Really
Truths
Would
Kinds
Thinking
Rule
Absolutely
Philosophy

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In business for yourself, not by yourself.
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Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.
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The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time
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An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
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Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.
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Once a decision is reached, stop worrying and start working.
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Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.
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All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
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To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.
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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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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
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If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
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The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out.
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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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Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none.
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Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
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The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.
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When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.
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The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.
William James