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.
WILLIAM JAMESA 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
More William James Quotes
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The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.
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The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
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Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world’s life
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Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
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New habits can be launched.
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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
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If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.
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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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Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
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The ‘I think’ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‘I breathe’ which actually does accompany them.
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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
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Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.
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Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains; under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
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Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
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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.
WILLIAM JAMES