"We [may] answer the question: "Why is snow……" — William James

"We [may] answer the question: "Why is snow white?" by saying, "For the same reason that soap-suds or whipped eggs are white"-in other words, instead of giving the reason for a fact, we give another example of the same fact. This offering a similar instance, instead of a reason, has often been criticised as one of the forms of logical depravity in men. But manifestly it is not a perverse act of thought, but only an incomplete one. Furnishing parallel cases is the necessary first step towards abstracting the reason imbedded in them all."

— William James

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484 Quotes by William James

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More Abstracting Quotes

This quote is filed under Abstracting Quotes, one of 11 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:

I'm not interested in 'abstracting' or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint… — Willem de Kooning
The physicist who states a law of nature with the aid of a mathematical formula is abstracting a real feature… — Hilary Putnam
The idea of abstracting away the one thing that must be blindingly fast, the kernel, is inherently counter productive. — Linus Torvalds
When you start with a portrait and try to find pure form by abstracting more and more, you must end… — Pablo Picasso
It may be that, while we plodding realists go on, for ever preoccupied with our daily chores, abstracting a microscopic… — William McFee
Hamlet 's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage,… — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division;… — Joseph Stalin
The plane is simply abstracting the power stored in the wave by a distant gale, and using it to counteract… — Lawrence Hargrave
It is possible to claim only through extrapolation, by abstracting, by redrawing the man from his voyage of his own… — Sorin Cerin

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