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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.

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
Well
Respect
Gains
Believe
Mistake
Mistakes
Practice
Using
Clear
Method
Makes
Confidence
Art
Soon
Saves
Back
Teaching
Psychology
Wells
Theory
Gain

More quotes by William James

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Our theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already partial: we follow 'elegenace' or 'economy'
William James
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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.
William James
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Man, biologically considered ... is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own kind.
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.
William James
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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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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
William James
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From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: Begin with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these.
William James
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
William James
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The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James
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The word 'cause' is an altar to an unknown god.
William James
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Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought.
William James
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The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed
William James
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Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
William James
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In its broadest term, religion says that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in rightful relations to it.
William James
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The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal 'objectivity,' as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its 'elegance,' or its congruity with our residual beliefs
William James
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If it works, it's true.
William James
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History is a bath of blood.
William James
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A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock
William James
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The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
William James
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The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
William James