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...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.

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
Karma
Buddhist
Doctrine
Principle
Agree
Principles
Apprehend

More quotes by William James

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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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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
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The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
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In its broadest term, religion says that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in rightful relations to it.
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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
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The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.
William James
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
William James
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Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
William James
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When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
William James
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To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is.
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The good we do today becomes the happiness of tomorrow.
William James
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Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.
William James
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In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied faiths, however, is, that they begin to cut each others throats too soon, and for getting on in the world and establishing a modus vivendi these pestilential refinements and reasonablenesses and moderations have to creep in.
William James
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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
William James
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
William James
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
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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The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
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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Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.
William James