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Every claim creates an obligation.

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
Claim
Creates
Obligation
Claims
Every

More quotes by 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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Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.
William James
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Let anyone try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or to attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. 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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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
William James
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Agisci come se quel che fai, facesse la differenza. La fa!
William James
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To know one thing thoroughly would be to know the universe.
William James
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It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.
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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All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
William James
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You do not sing because you're happy, you're happy because you sing.
William James
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The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
William James
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Individuality is founded in feeling
William James
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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
William James
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
William James
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If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
William James
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Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling.
William James
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No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed.
William James
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Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
William James
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At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe.
William James
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Truth in our ideas means their power to work.
William James