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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
More quotes by William James
Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.
William James
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.
William James
Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.
William James
We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
William James
What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.... Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it.
William James
The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
William James
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.
William James
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
William James
The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience and the only fulfillment we can speak of isthe reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.
William James
What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
William James
This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
William James
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.
William James
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
William James
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.
William James
...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.
William James
...These healers...my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories....But their facts are patent and startling and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity.
William James
When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.
William James
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
William James
Act the part and you will become the part.
William James
The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
William James