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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.

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
Conservatives
Extreme
Extremes
Belief
Matter

More quotes by William James

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Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
William James
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As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) isthe art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James
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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
William James
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An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
William James
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On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.
William James
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Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
William James
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Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
William James
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Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
William James
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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.
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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So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
William James
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Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
William James
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The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.
William James
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If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have been among the most important. . . . It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially when a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the fun.
William James
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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
William James
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The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.
William James
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From the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology.
William James
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Results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are sure to float up of their own accord from a long enough daily work at a given matter.
William James
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The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.
William James
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Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
William James