Belief and doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubting, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing is, is continuing to act as if it were not.

William James
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Ur be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the... - Dorothy Parker
  2. I like the scientific spirit–the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine–it always keeps the way beyond open–always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to... - Walt Whitman
  3. We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty! - Douglas Adams
  4. Sometimes, some lies that spoken with high confidencecould be more receptive than facts that spoken with doubt. - Toba Beta
  5. Defeat is for the valiant. Only they will know the honour of losing and the joy of winning I am not here to tell you that defeat is a part of life: we all know that. Only the defeated know Love. Because it is in... - Paulo Coelho
More Quotes By William James
  1. The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.
  2. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
  3. A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
  4. Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true, " it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if...
  5. See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalises. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts of definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it remains...
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