Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics. — William James Copy Share Image
The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse. — William James Copy Share Image
There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other. — William James Copy Share Image
All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly… — William James Copy Share Image
Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout. — William James Copy Share Image
Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious… — William James Copy Share Image
“In truths dependent on our personal action, then, faith based on desire is certainly a lawful and possibly an indispensable thing.” — 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
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
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
Great indeed is Fear; but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus… — William James Copy Share Image
Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions… — William James Copy Share Image
“Through prayer, religion insists, things which cannot be realized in any other manner come about: energy which but for prayer would be… — William James Copy Share Image
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or… — William James Copy Share Image
Religions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly,… — William James Copy Share Image
“We must judge the tree by its fruit. The best fruits of the religious experience are the best things history has 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
I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable… — William James Copy Share Image
Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual… — William James Copy Share Image
But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every… — William James Copy Share Image
Modern transcendental idealism, Emersonianism, for instance, also seems to let God evaporate into abstract Ideality. Not a deity in concreto, not a… — William James Copy Share Image
The first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. But any object that is… — William James Copy Share Image
Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances,… — William James Copy Share Image
To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value,… — William James Copy Share Image
“When all is said and done, we are in the end absolutely dependent on the universe; and into sacrifices and surrenders of… — 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
[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things. — William James Copy Share Image
Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects in the phenomenal world. — William James Copy Share Image
Spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world. — William James Copy Share Image
“In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.” — William James Copy Share Image
Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude. — William James Copy Share Image
In its broadest term, religion says that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in rightful relations to… — 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
![“[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.” quote by William James](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/3ad/william-james-228_grace_religion-is-the-attempt-to-be-in-harmony_2751119.png)
