A Quote by William James
Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
Related Quotes
Philosophy is "an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.
I used to be unusually short, and I think I'd prefer that to being unusually tall.
I'm not precious about anything. The effort it took to get something means nothing to me in post. It means nothing to the audience. I'll chop limbs off. I'll put an arm where a leg should be. I'll do anything.
I'm not precious about anything. The effort it took to get something means nothing to me in post.And it means nothing to the audience. I'll chop limbs off. I'll put an arm where a leg should be. I'll do anything.
Those who think that metaphysics is just misunderstood grammar will react to my giving metaphysics some place or another in the system of knowledge.
Real love is demanding. I would fail in my mission if I did not clearly tell you so. For it was Jesus - our Jesus himself - who said: 'You are my friends if you do what I command you'. Love demands effort and a personal commitment to the will of God. It means discipline and sacrifice, but it also means joy and human fulfilment.
The people I know who seem to make unusual efforts at rationality, are unusually honest, or, failing that, at least have unusually bad social skills.
Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.
Wins and losses come a dime a dozen. But effort? Nobody can judge effort. Effort is between you and you. Effort ain't got nothing to do with nobody else.
Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.
Poetry is essentially the antithesis of Metaphysics: Metaphysics purge the mind of the senses and cultivate the disembodiment of the spiritual; Poetry is all passionate and feeling and animates the inanimate; Metaphysics are most perfect when concerned with universals; Poetry, when most concerned with particulars.
Metaphysics is the study of the most general nature and basic structure of reality, and therefore the concepts of metaphysics, concepts like time, space, identity, resemblance, substance, property, fact, event, composition, possibility, etc., are the most fundamental concepts. Thus metaphysics is the most fundamental theoretical discipline.
Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.
Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.
That is my morality or my metaphysics or me myself: a passer-by in everything, even my own soul. I belong to nothing, I desire nothing, I am nothing except an abstract centre of impersonal sensations, a sentient mirror fallen from the wall but still turned to reflect the diversity of the world.
I see with much pleasure that you are working on a large work on the integral Calculus ... The reconciliation of the methods which you are planning to make, serves to clarify them mutually, and what they have in common contains very often their true metaphysics; this is why that metaphysics is almost the last thing that one discovers. The spirit arrives at the results as if by instinct; it is only on reflecting upon the route that it and others have followed that it succeeds in generalising the methods and in discovering its metaphysics.
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