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To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction

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
Give
Tactics
Better
Rope
Self
Contradiction
Giving
Abstract
Accusations
Eventually
Outset
Plenty
Accusation
Theory
Hangs
Truth
Choke

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When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.
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To know one thing thoroughly would be to know the universe.
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The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.
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No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
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When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.
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Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for, and is therefore right in postulating, may be enveloped in a wider order, on which she has no claim at all.
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No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
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Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
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... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not practically fitted countless stones 'fit' gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions 'fit' realities, and countless truths are valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.
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There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
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To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
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Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
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The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
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The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, words, words, words, must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.
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Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world.
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It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
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If it works, it's true.
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What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.
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We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given why we should not pray. Others give reasons why we should pray. Very little is said of the reason we do pray. The reason is simple: We pray because we cannot help praying.
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The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
William James