What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute finite evil is โoverruledโ already, we may, therefore, whenever we wish, treat the temporal as if it were potentially the eternal, be sure that we can trust its outcome, and, without sin, dismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility. In short, they mean that we have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business.
William JamesGive your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
William JamesYou may not get everything you dream about, but you will never get anything you don't dream about.
William JamesThe unrest which keeps the never stopping clock of metaphysics going is the thought that the nonexistence of this world is just as possible as its existence.
William JamesThere can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.
William JamesBut it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.
William James