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Belief Quotes by William James

39 Belief quotes by William James

All Belief quotes William James’s page

William James points out that a belief that something is impossible can block new discoveries. He also says that personal inner experiences can be the strongest evidence for God. Finally, he believes that science and faith grow when we keep old ideas from spreading too far.

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Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.

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Belief creates the actual fact. --William James

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Our beliefs are really rules for action.

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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.

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Belief creates the actual fact.

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What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.

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There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.

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I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.

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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

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Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.

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It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.

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Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.

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In any project the important factor is your belief. Without belief, there can be no successful outcome.

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The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence…

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Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should…

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Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act…

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Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . .…

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A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience…

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Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him…

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“Belief and doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubting, or refusing to…

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I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain…

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Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new…

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The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the…

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What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong…

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To begin with, our knowledge grows in spots. The spots may be large or small, but the knowledge ever grows all over...…

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That reality is 'independent' means that there is something in every experience that escapes our arbitrary control. If it be a sensible…

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Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true…

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The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much…

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Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we…

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“Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. Our belief in…

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What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute…

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To begin with our knowledge grows in spots. ..What you first gain, ... is probably a small amount of new information, a…

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To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value,…

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“Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act…

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Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are…

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Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible ... faith is the readiness to act in a cause…

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The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite,…

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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." "This life is worth living, we can…

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Intellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents;…

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More by William James

Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.

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…

In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who…

“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…

Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.

'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or…

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

It is your friends who make your world.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them,…

“How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and…

There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes…