Faith Quotes by William James

Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.

— William James

Belief creates the actual fact. --William James

— William James

Our beliefs are really rules for action.

— William James

Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins

— William James

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

— William James

Belief creates the actual fact.

— William James

Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.

— William James

A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.

— William James

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. --William James

— William James

Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.

— William James

To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.

— William James

We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could.

— William James

'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth

— William James

Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse

— William James

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

— William James

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

— William James

“In truths dependent on our personal action, then, faith based on desire is certainly a lawful and possibly an indispensable thing.”

— William James

These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe life is worth living and your belief will…

— William James

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

— William James

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith…

— William James

The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in…

— William James

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

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

— William James

In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied…

— William James

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

— William James

“Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it…

— William James

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

— William James

“The submission which you demand of yourself to the general fact of evil in the world, your apparent acquiescence in it, is…

— William James

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

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

The greatest discovery of the 19th century was not in the realm of the physical sciences, but the power of the subconscious…

— William James

“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

“It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly…

— William James

“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

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

— William James

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

— William James

“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

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

— William James

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

— William James

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.

— William James