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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract

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
Abstract
Agree
Reality
Truth
Ideas
Must
Inconsistency
Realities
Concrete

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Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity.
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Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.
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The word 'cause' is an altar to an unknown god.
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Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
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Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
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If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.
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In its broadest term, religion says that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in rightful relations to it.
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Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.
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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.
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The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.
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Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.
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One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible.
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Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins
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Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.
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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.
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Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.
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Lay plans as if we were to be immortal.
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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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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
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To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein
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