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“Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work.”
James presents pragmatism as a method that makes theories answer to practical consequences and experience instead of allowing abstract formulations to remain rigid and self-sufficient.
Source note: Pragmatism, Lecture II, “What Pragmatism Means”; Project Gutenberg #5116. The sentence follows James’s claim that theories become instruments rather than final answers.
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“Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things.”
James resists treating every possible intellectual mistake as catastrophic, because an excessive fear of error can itself prevent inquiry, experience and the possibility of gaining truth.
Source note: The Will to Believe, essay “The Will to Believe”; Project Gutenberg #26659. James is contrasting the risk of being mistaken with the cost of refusing every uncertain intellectual venture.
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“Prejudices must be removed by outside influences or not at all.”
Voice: Dialogue speaker · Old Man
The Old Man argues that entrenched assumptions change through encounters, teaching, experience, and other influences rather than simply disappearing by private command.
Source note: What Is Man?, opening dialogue between the Old Man and Young Man; this sentence belongs to the Old Man’s deterministic argument about education and outside influence.
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“education ought to do more for a boy”
Washington rejects an overly narrow definition of schooling and asks whether education can improve the practical conditions and responsibilities of life.
Source note: Working With the Hands, Chapter I; Project Gutenberg #64504. This short excerpt precedes Washington’s discussion of poverty, family responsibility and practical education.
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“it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.”
Learning becomes knowledge, in this account, when material has been actively reconsidered and integrated rather than merely encountered or memorized.
Source note: The Art of Literature, section “On Thinking for Oneself,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The preceding sentence says a person must first learn something before turning it over in the mind.
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“It is reflection which forms habits, and fixes principles indelibly on the heart.”
Habit formation becomes stronger when action is joined with reflection, because principles understood and revisited are more likely to guide later choices.
Source note: Thoughts on the Education of Daughters; Wollstonecraft connects reflection with the formation of durable principles and habits.