Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
William JamesIn its broadest term, religion says that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in rightful relations to it.
William JamesFrom the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology.
William JamesThe prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
William JamesFailure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results.
William James