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Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience they will lead him nowhere or else make false connections

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
Make
Whose
Loose
Belief
Nowhere
Experience
Beliefs
Else
False
Order
Connections
Reality
Fast
Truth
Lead
Woe
Play
Follow
Realities

More quotes by William James

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A great idea goes through three stages on its way to acceptance: 1) it is dismissed as nonsense, 2) it is acknowledged as true, but insignificant, 3) finally, it is seen to be important, but not really anything new.
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How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
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If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
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The squalid cash interpretation put on the word success — is our national disease.
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Belief creates the actual fact.
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The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
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There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
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Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual.
William James
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Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
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An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total.
William James
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I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
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The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
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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.
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Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.
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Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.
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There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
William James
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Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.
William James
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As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
William James
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A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.
William James