The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
- Topic: Faith, Risk, Truth
- Location: Yellowstone National Park
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from William James
An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves . . . But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
More Quotes from Yellowstone National Park
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Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you. Amen.
As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.
Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.
The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.
I dream, I test my dreams against my beliefs, I dare to take risks, and I execute my vision to make those dreams come true.
Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.
If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough.
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.
Freedom of information is a fundamental human right...for a nation that is afraid to let its people to judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in the newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.
Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie.
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.
Everything you say should be true but not everything true should be said.