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
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
“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
The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown… — 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
Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude. — 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
“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
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
Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge. — 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
“In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.” — William James Copy Share Image
Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics. — 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
It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should… — William James Copy Share Image
There is no being capable of a spiritual life who does not have within him a jungle. Where the wolf constantly HOWLS… — William James Copy Share Image
Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism means theaffirmation 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
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
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
[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things. — William James Copy Share Image
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world. — William James Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. — William James Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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