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Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it

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
Usually
Truth
Good
Ordinate
Category
Distinct
Categories
Supposed
Species

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To know one thing thoroughly would be to know the universe.
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Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
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From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreigness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy (a benevolent Universe) means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust.
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The strenuous life tastes better
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Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.
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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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A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.
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History is a bath of blood.
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There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.
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A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
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It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact.
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Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
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An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
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The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
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Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.
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A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
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Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.
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All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.
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