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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
Would
Like
Definition
Definitions
Sounds
Sound
Truth
Better
Believe

More quotes by William James

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There are 3 rules to follow if you want to change (1) Start immediately, (2) Do it flamboyantly, (3) No exceptions.
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The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
William James
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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.
William James
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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
William James
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
William James
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Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse
William James
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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.
William James
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We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.
William James
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Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.
William James
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The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
William James
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Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have so carefully posited 'reality' ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist.
William James
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The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
William James
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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
William James
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Real servants don't try to use God for their purposes. They let God use them for His purposes.
William James
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If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.
William James
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A thing is important if anyone think it important.
William James
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Religions have approved themselves they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.
William James
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Lets take full advantage of this discovery
William James
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Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors.
William James
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Philosophy is an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.
William James