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Quote by William James

“Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will.”

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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“The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.”

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Book:The Meaning of Truth

Source: The Meaning of Truth

“We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.”

Kind Animal Society Sight Fellows Innate Propensity Gregarious

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. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him.”

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Book:James and Dewey on Belief and Experience

Source: James and Dewey on Belief and Experience

“As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.”

Long Expectations Zest Postman

Author:William James

“The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.”

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Book:The Principles of Psychology

Source: The Principles of Psychology

“I will entertain anything; it doesn't matter. You know, it's not obviously about the price, it's not about who, it's kind of about when and what. It's material, that's all.”

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Author:Tom Hanks

“Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.”

Faith Hypothesis

Book:The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality

Source: The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, and Human Immortality

“Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.”

Faith Religious Chance Loss Risk Fields Position Errors Believer Stakes Hypothesis

Book:James and Dewey on Belief and Experience

Source: James and Dewey on Belief and Experience

“Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.”

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Book:Pragmatism

Source: Pragmatism

“Essential truth, the truth of the intellectualists, the truth with no one thinking it, is like the coat that fits tho no one has ever tried it on, like the music that no ear has listened to. It is less real, not more real, than the verified article; and to attribute a superior degree of glory to it seems little more than a piece of perverse abstraction-worship.”

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Book:The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding

Source: The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding