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Truth is something that happens to an idea.

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
Idea
Happens
Truth
Ideas
Something

More quotes by William James

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We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
William James
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
William James
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
William James
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Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.
William James
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Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.
William James
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I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
William James
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Most unhappiness is caused because people listen to themselves... instead of talking to themselves.
William James
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In the last analysis, then, we believe that we all know and think about and talk about the same world because we believe our PERCEPTS are possessed by us in common
William James
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No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
William James
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If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
William James
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The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.
William James
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But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.
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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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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We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
William James
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Agisci come se quel che fai, facesse la differenza. La fa!
William James
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A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.
William James
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When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.
William James
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Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
William James
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If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
William James