William James Quotes About Responsibility

Quotes about: Responsibility

• The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down.

  William James

  Responsibility, Self, Worry

  "The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature". Book by William James, 1902.

• A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.

  William James

  Responsibility, Men, Stronger

  William James, Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, Ignas K. Skrupskelis (1982). “Essays in Religion and Morality”, p.153, Harvard University Press

• Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.

  William James

  Letting Go, Giving Up, Responsibility

  William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.95, Harvard University Press

• When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.

  William James

  Responsibility, Order, Decision

  William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.167, Nuvision Pubns

• 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

• [There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain forms of death, death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and wrong, death of everything that paganism, naturalism and legalism pin their trust on.

  William James

  Responsibility, World, Paganism

  William James, Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, Ignas K. Skrupskelis (1982). “Essays in Religion and Morality”, p.128, Harvard University Press

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