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There is but one unconditional commandment … to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.

William James

Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.
WILLIAM JAMES

Mean Reality Truth
Facts’ are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.
WILLIAM JAMES

Facts Knowledge Science
The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.
WILLIAM JAMES

Appreciated Humans Needs
When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
WILLIAM JAMES

Action Emotion Inspiration
We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest… But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.
WILLIAM JAMES

Islands Roots Sea Underground
It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
WILLIAM JAMES

Art Force Process
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
WILLIAM JAMES

Law Science Together
In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.
WILLIAM JAMES

Educational Philosophy School
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
WILLIAM JAMES

Men Philosophical Philosophy
It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
WILLIAM JAMES

Natural Political Politics
Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
WILLIAM JAMES

Decide Shaped Views World
The ‘I think’ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‘I breathe’ which actually does accompany them.
WILLIAM JAMES

Able Accompanying Thinking
With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation.
WILLIAM JAMES

Attempt Failure Humiliation No
The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
WILLIAM JAMES

Attitude Mean Ugly
The true’to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as ‘the right’ is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.
WILLIAM JAMES

Briefly Thinking True Way
To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
WILLIAM JAMES

Abnormal Philosophical Understanding

There is but one unconditional commandment … to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.

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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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Popular Authors

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