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To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein

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
Better
Always
Dogmatize
Hypotheses
Hypothesis
Surely
Consider
Truth

More quotes by William James

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Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.
William James
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One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the state of their mind.
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There is a voice inside which speaks and says, This is the real me!
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Serious development of the personality begins at the closet door.
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The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
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[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
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'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth
William James
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First... a new theory is attacked as absurd then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
William James
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It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call something there, more deep and more general than any of the special and particular senses by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed.
William James
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Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
William James
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Science can tell us what exists but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.
William James
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We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
William James
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Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
William James
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Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it
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Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism.
William James
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Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.
William James
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea... The islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
William James
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A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
William James
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Knowledge about life is one thing effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
William James
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The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.
William James