We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.
WILLIAM JAMESA man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
More William James Quotes
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At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe.
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Footnotes — little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
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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.
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To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
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Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.
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The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
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Pure experience’ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
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Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don’t want to do
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It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.
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When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.
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The emotions aren’t always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
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Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
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It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
WILLIAM JAMES