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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
Agree
Reality
Truth
Ideas
Must
Inconsistency
Realities
Concrete
Abstract

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I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
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I don't sing because I'm happy I'm happy because I sing.
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So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation.
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Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.
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Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
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In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.
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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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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
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Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
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In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
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That which is most personal, is most interesting.
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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
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Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair.
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Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
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Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
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The first thing that intellect does with an object is to class it with something else.
William James
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Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses power of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.
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The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.
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Individuality is founded in feeling
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