Will to believe Quotes
Enjoy the best quotes on Will to believe , Explore, save & share top quotes on Will to believe .
“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. The whole defence of religious faith hinges upon action. If the action required or inspired by the religious hypothesis is in no way different from that dictated by the naturalistic hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure superfluity, better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy is a piece of idle trifling, unworthy of serious minds. I myself believe, of course, that the religious hypothesis gives to the world an expression which specifically determines our reactions, and makes them in a large part unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme of belief.”
William James
“William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For my part, I should wish to preach the 'will to doubt' ... what is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.”
Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”
William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy“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, The Will to Believe, Human Immortality and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy“Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other,--what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives.”
William James, The Will to Believe, Human Immortality and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy“The will to believe has given us our great saints. The will to doubt has given us our great scientists. The goal of the intelligent man is a character in which the will to believe of the saint and the will to doubt of the scientist meet and mingle.”
Glenn Frank“The will to matter is at least as important as the will to believe.”
Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away“What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.”
Bertrand Russell“Faith…is a concern of the whole person; it is the most personal concern, and that which determines all others. …it is not something which we can produce by the will to believe, but that by which we are grasped.”
Paul Tillich, Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate RealityAll in One Creative & Marketing Platform to tell stories at scale
