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We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.

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
Extremes
Follow
Proud
Example
Advising
Others
Shrink
Nature
Passionately
Human
Shrinks
Humans
Extreme

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Intellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents but has no power of re-determining its character, for that is already given.
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If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
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As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
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...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
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Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.
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Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
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The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.
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[T]here is very little difference between one person and another, but what little difference ther eis, is very important.
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There is but one unconditional commandment ... to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.
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Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.
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If you can change your mind, you can change your life.
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In business for yourself, not by yourself.
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I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
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To know one thing thoroughly would be to know the universe.
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Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to keep by force of mere inertia.
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A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock
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The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
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The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.
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A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
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We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.
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