William James Quotes About Evil

Quotes about: Evil

• Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its string can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it.

  William James

  Courage, Attitude, Fear

• Since you make evil or good by your own thoughts, it is your ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.

  William James

  Evil, Ruling, Prove

• We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.

  William James

  Character, Fate, Evil

  "The Principles of Psychology". Book by William James, 1890.

• When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.

  William James

  Reality, Men, Evil

  Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.369, Simon and Schuster

• Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.

  William James

  Life, Religious, Courage

  William James (2016). “William James: Essays and Lectures”, p.252, Routledge

• There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.

  William James

  Philosophical, Eye, Reality

  Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.429, Simon and Schuster

• 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 ‘overruled’ 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 James

  Holiday, Mean, Responsibility

• Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.

  William James

  Skulls, Evil, Healthy

  William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.119, Harvard University Press

• We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.

  William James

  Fate, Evil, Spinning

  William James (2012). “Psychology: The Briefer Course”, p.15, Courier Corporation

• Evil is a disease; and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the original complaint.

  William James

  Evil, Worry, Add

  Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.401, Simon and Schuster

• There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual.

  William James

  Evil, Healthy, Individual

• The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can be more base and unworthy than the pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills it may have been engendered? What is more injurious to others? What less helpful as a way out of the difficulty? It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble which occasioned it, and increases the total evil of the situation. At all costs, then, we ought to reduce the sway of that mood; we ought to scout it in ourselves and others, and never show it tolerance.

  William James

  Happiness, Attitude, Mean

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.43, Xist Publishing

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