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An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true

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
Truth
Must
Perceptual
Conceptual
Conform
Experience
True
Order
Reality

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Man can change his life simply by changing his attitude.
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
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The work that leads to a doctor's degree is a constant temptation to sacrifice one's growth as a man to one's growth as a specialist.
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Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
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The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.
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Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
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'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
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In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
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A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.
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A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.
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Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them.
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All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on.
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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot
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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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The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
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Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
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