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The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.

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
Consists
Intellectual
Almost
Comes
Perceptual
Experience
Substitution
Order
Conceptual
Men
Originally
Life
Wholly

More quotes by William James

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We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.
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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
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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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The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
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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.
William James
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Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.
William James
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Smitten as we are with the vision of social righteousness, a God indifferent to everything but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual favorites, lacks an essential element of largeness.
William James
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It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
William James
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Man alone of all the creatures of earth can change his own pattern. Man alone is the architect of his own destiny.
William James
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We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.
William James
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I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
William James
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As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird 's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.
William James
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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
William James
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Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.
William James
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Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true.
William James
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Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
William James
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The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which actually does accompany them.
William James
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Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
William James
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Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.
William James
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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.
William James