Quote

A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and of zological evolution as expounded by Mr. Darwin on the other.

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
Hand
Expounded
Social
Obtains
Facts
Darwin
Hands
Parallel
Never
Parallels
Think
Noticed
Thinking
Remarkable
Evolution

More quotes by William James

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The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
William James
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The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience and the only fulfillment we can speak of isthe reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.
William James
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Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
William James
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Truth is something that happens to an idea.
William James
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There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.
William James
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Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.
William James
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[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
William James
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Organization and method mean much, but contagious human characters mean more in a university.
William James
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The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
William James
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Pragmatism asks its usual question. Grant an idea or belief to be true, it says, what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?
William James
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I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)
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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Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.
William James
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
William James
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Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.
William James
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A man may not achieve everything he has dreamed, but he will never achieve anything great without having dreamed it first.
William James
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I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.
William James
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The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal 'objectivity,' as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its 'elegance,' or its congruity with our residual beliefs
William James
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Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off subjection.
William James
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As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
William James