"The man who knows governments most completely is……" — William James
"The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening."
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William James
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484 Quotes by William James
William James has 484 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.
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Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions.
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To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.
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There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or whatever you please to call them), of…
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Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting…
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No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to…
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Habit is second nature, or rather . . . ten times nature.
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully…
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It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
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The entire routine of our memorized acquisitions is a consequence of nothing but the Law of Contiguity. The words of…
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Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already…
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An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort…
See all 484 quotes by William James »
More Abstract Quotes
This quote is filed under Abstract Quotes,
one of 741 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.
— Honore de Balzac
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I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I'd draw a big ram's head, really…
— Jean-Michel Basquiat
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In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes.
— Theodor Adorno
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None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace.
— Theodor Adorno
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Good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people's minds. It's not impossible. It has some…
— Nicolas Cage
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Science fiction is a way that I can go into the abstract, go into the imagination, and audiences are still…
— Nicolas Cage
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I am searching for abstract ways of expressing reality, abstract forms that will enlighten my own mystery.
— Eric Cantona
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Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
— Al Capp
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Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change…
— Saul Alinsky
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'Woman on the Plaza,' with its distinct horizon, snow-like surfaces, wintry wall, stunning sunlight, sharp shadows, and hurrying figure, would…
— Sam Abell
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Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply…
— John Dewey
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It is difficult to talk about fashion in the abstract, without a human body before my eyes, without drawings, without…
— Giorgio Armani
See all 741 Abstract Quotes »