Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
WILLIAM JAMESPure experience’ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
More William James Quotes
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So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.
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A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
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Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
WILLIAM JAMES -
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
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True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to ‘principles,’ and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
WILLIAM JAMES -
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
WILLIAM JAMES -
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
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For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.
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We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities; it is only the particular ass that does so whom we can’t tolerate.
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Once you accept an idea, it’s an idea whose time has come.
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Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
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We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
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Man, biologically considered … is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own kind.
WILLIAM JAMES