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'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth

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
Sounds
Sound
Truth
Better
Believe
Would
Like
Definition
Definitions

More quotes by William James

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I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives
William James
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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
William James
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There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood bu those who hear it.
William James
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The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
William James
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Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life
William James
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It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
William James
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There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
William James
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Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true.
William James
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To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education.
William James
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A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
William James
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How many of us persist in a precipitate course which, but for a moment of heedlessness we might never have entered upon, simply because we hate to change our minds.
William James
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The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.
William James
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Out of time we cut 'days' and 'nights', 'summers' and 'winters.' We say what, each part of the sensible continuum is, and all these abstract whats are concepts. The intelletual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the persceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
William James
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Give your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
William James
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I will act as if I do make a difference.
William James
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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
William James
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New habits can be launched.
William James
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The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands.
William James
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Choose a self and stand by it.
William James
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In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
William James