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A great idea goes through three stages on its way to acceptance: 1) it is dismissed as nonsense, 2) it is acknowledged as true, but insignificant, 3) finally, it is seen to be important, but not really anything new.
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
Way
Idea
Stages
Three
Insignificant
True
Nonsense
Anything
Acceptance
Ideas
Finally
Important
Goes
Great
Stage
Dismissed
Really
Seen
Acknowledged
More quotes by William James
It is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit.
William James
The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows.
William James
I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
William James
The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
William James
For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
William James
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
William James
You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action.
William James
Truth is something that happens to an idea.
William James
The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.
William James
True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as.
William James
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
Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes spiritualism means theaffirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.
William James
The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
William James
Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
William James
The perfection of rottenness.
William James
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
No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
William James
The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
William James
The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
William James
The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party.
William James
