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

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Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.
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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.
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Men's activities are occupied into ways -- in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
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An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: There is very little difference between one man and another but what little there is, is very important. This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.
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Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
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The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
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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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Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.
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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
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All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.
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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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One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.
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Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes
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Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
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The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer--and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars.
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If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
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Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
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We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
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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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... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences.
William James