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As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
William James -
... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.
William James
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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
William James -
The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
William James -
One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the state of their mind.
William James -
Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.
William James -
Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes
William James -
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
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Man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educabilityand in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy, and acquisitiveness reinforce.
William James -
We are mere bundles of habits.
William James -
To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction
William James -
I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.
William James -
It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
William James -
An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physiologically incomplete... Its motor consequences are what clinch it.
William James
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Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
William James -
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.
William James -
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.
William James -
Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
William James -
The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.
William James -
The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
William James
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A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.
William James -
Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
William James -
There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
William James -
We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition
William James