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

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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way.
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Philosophy is an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.
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If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when, gradually or suddenly, it passes away and we are fresher than before!
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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.
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Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.
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A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.
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To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
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The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
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All religions begin with the cry Help.
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We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
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'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth
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We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.
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[Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience's demands, nothing being omitted.
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An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
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But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.
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An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
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To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.
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Knowledge about life is one thing effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
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What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
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