Quote

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

William James

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Persons
Result
Live
Results
Come
Hours
Enough
Faith
Risking
Thing
Often
Beforehand
Life
Makes
Pessimism
Another
Optimism
True
Hour

More quotes by William James

Image
The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
William James
Image
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
William James
Image
a man does not cry because he is sad, he is sad because he cries
William James
Image
Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.
William James
Image
The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one.
William James
Image
Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true.
William James
Image
Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
William James
Image
How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?
William James
Image
The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
William James
Image
... religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thingthat it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.
William James
Image
There is but one unconditional commandment ... to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.
William James
Image
The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer--and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars.
William James
Image
Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off subjection.
William James
Image
Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience
William James
Image
The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.
William James
Image
Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
William James
Image
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.
William James
Image
No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
William James
Image
My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
William James
Image
Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.
William James