'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth — William James Copy Share Image
Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse — William James Copy Share Image
We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could. — William James Copy Share Image
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. --William James — William James Copy Share Image
Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. — William James Copy Share Image
It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it. — William James Copy Share Image
I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain… — William James Copy Share Image
Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are… — William James Copy Share Image
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause… — William James Copy Share Image
Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . .… — William James Copy Share Image
Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges… — William James Copy Share Image
A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience… — William James Copy Share Image
Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him… — William James Copy Share Image
“Belief and doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubting, or refusing to… — William James Copy Share Image
In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied… — William James Copy Share Image
The greatest discovery of the 19th century was not in the realm of the physical sciences, but the power of the subconscious… — William James Copy Share Image
Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we… — William James Copy Share Image
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… — William James Copy Share Image
“The submission which you demand of yourself to the general fact of evil in the world, your apparent acquiescence in it, is… — William James Copy Share Image
The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much… — William James Copy Share Image
“Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it… — William James Copy Share Image
Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true… — William James Copy Share Image
What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute… — William James Copy Share Image
“The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature… — William James Copy Share Image
“Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act… — William James Copy Share Image
“Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. Our belief in… — William James Copy Share Image
“It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly… — William James Copy Share Image
“Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we… — William James Copy Share Image
In any project the important factor is your belief. Without belief, there can be no successful outcome. — William James Copy Share Image
There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self. — William James Copy Share Image
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. — William James Copy Share Image
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world. — William James Copy Share
We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we… — William James Copy Share
In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who… — William James Copy Share
“Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered… — William James Copy Share
Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or… — William James Copy Share
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be. — William James Copy Share
Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them,… — William James Copy Share
“How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and… — William James Copy Share
There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere. — William James Copy Share
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. — William James Copy Share
The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes… — William James Copy Share
