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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot

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
False
True
Cannot
Truth
Ideas
Validate
Assimilate
Verify

More quotes by William James

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The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.
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The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
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The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed.
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Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
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Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
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To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next.
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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.
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Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.
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New habits can be launched.
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All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
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The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.
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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.
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It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
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There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker if sad, it must not scream or curse.
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Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
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Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
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If you can change your mind, you can change your life.
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What a teacher needs to know about psychology might almost be written on the palm of one's hand.
William James