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Quote by William James

“Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.”

Quote by William James

Author

William James, born on January 11, 1842, and died on August 26, 1910, was an influential American philosopher, psychologist, and writer. He is considered one of the founders of functionalism in psychology and has had a profound impact on the fields of psychology, philosophy, and religion. more

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“I think everything is pretty well preordained - even your mistakes.”

Thinking Wells Mistake

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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 pace of its parts. Like a bird 's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.”

Firsts Made Different Facts Seems Views Consciousness Wonderful Bird Strikes Flight Streams Pace

Book:The Principles of Psychology

Source: The Principles of Psychology

“Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities his preeminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic and unnecessary character of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous, he would never have established himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary.”

Source: Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays

“Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow.”

Men May Mean Philosophy Feelings Asks Individual Grows Moral Divine Solitude Organization Relation Theology Ritual Evident

Book:James and Dewey on Belief and Experience

Source: James and Dewey on Belief and Experience

“What we really need the poet's and orator's I help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.”

Men Needs Should Kind Helping Nations Common Alive Poet Lonely Fortune Warm Glorious Fifty Fourth Monument Civics Valor Dubious Orators Gregarious

Book:Essays in Religion and Morality

Source: Essays in Religion and Morality

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

Ifs Enough Facts

Author:William James

“The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.”

Aim Simplicity Complexity

Author:William James

“The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.”

Author:William James

“In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied faiths, however, is, that they begin to cut each others throats too soon, and for getting on in the world and establishing a modus vivendi these pestilential refinements and reasonablenesses and moderations have to creep in.”

World Believe Heart Individual Cutting Trouble Throat Moderation Creeps Refinement Robust Reasonableness

Author:William James

“The study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.”

Shows Might Consciousness Study Complexes Sake Nervous Organs Distribution Nervous System Steering

Book:The Principles of Psychology

Source: The Principles of Psychology