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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

In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
WILLIAM JAMES

Belief Extremes Matter
To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education.
WILLIAM JAMES

Deny Neglect Wise
You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.
WILLIAM JAMES

Cash Experience Stream
Man alone of all the creatures of earth can change his own pattern. Man alone is the architect of his own destiny.
WILLIAM JAMES

Destiny Men Tree
Once you accept an idea, it’s an idea whose time has come.
WILLIAM JAMES

Accepting Daring Ideas
No one sees further into a generalization than his own knowledge of detail extends.
WILLIAM JAMES

Details Generalization Knowledge
A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual’s desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock
WILLIAM JAMES

Belief Desire Truth
When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.
WILLIAM JAMES

Broken Concepts Reality
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.
WILLIAM JAMES

Appreciation Attitude Philosophy
As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.
WILLIAM JAMES

Expectations Long Zest
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.
WILLIAM JAMES

Children Effortless Reading Sky
So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end…and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.
WILLIAM JAMES

Anticipation Brave Use
The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
WILLIAM JAMES

Intellectual Men Order
Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.
WILLIAM JAMES

Asceticism Ease Expression
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
The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.
WILLIAM JAMES

Firsts Lecture Psychology

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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