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... 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 the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
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Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.
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Life feels like a real fight - as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem.
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Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
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No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
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The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
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Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
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Humanism . . . is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight.
William James
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The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.
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The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.
William James
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It is your friends who make your world.
William James
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
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Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
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An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true
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I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.
William James
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[Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience's demands, nothing being omitted.
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When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
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The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows.
William James