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Facts Quotes by William James

43 Facts quotes by William James

All Facts quotes William James’s page

William James describes facts as the borders that shape what we can know, not the source of all knowledge. He favors a pragmatic view that skips abstract theory and looks for ideas that help people live meaningfully, urging us to spend life on things that outlast us.

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Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.

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Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.

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The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.

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Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system

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Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one

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Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.

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Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.

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But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.

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Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.

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Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions…

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The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony…

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Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together…

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Contemporary philosophers, even the rationalistic minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact.

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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.

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Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are…

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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of…

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Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new…

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But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their…

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There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account…

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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…

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The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and…

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It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones,…

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As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different…

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From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the…

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The entire routine of our memorized acquisitions, for example, is a consequence of nothing but the Law of Contiguity. The words of…

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We [may] answer the question: "Why is snow white?" by saying, "For the same reason that soap-suds or whipped eggs are white"-in…

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Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences…

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I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable…

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We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. If you say that this is…

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If you say that this is absurd, that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to…

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Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life's…

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If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us…

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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

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A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and…

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Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and…

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The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed…

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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in…

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Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process:…

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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." "This life is worth living, we can…

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...These healers...my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories…But their facts are patent and startling; and anything that interferes with the…

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More by William James

Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.

We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we…

In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who…

“Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered…

Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.

'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or…

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

It is your friends who make your world.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them,…

“How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and…

There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes…