William James Quotes

Science has faith. We make postulates. We can't prove those postulates, but we have faith in them.

In science, nothing is ever 100% proven.

Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

I do believe that there is a conflict between science and religion ... the spirit or attitude toward the facts is different in religion from what it is in science. The uncertainty that is necessary in order to appreciate nature is not easily correlated with the feeling of certainty in faith.

Nor must we forget that in science there are no final truths.

Belief cannot be reckoned with in terms of science, for science and faith are mutually exclusive.

Faith doesn't reduce uncertainty. Faith embraces uncertainty.

Do not say hypothesis, and even less theory: say way of thinking.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

Faith is stepping out on nothing and landing on something.

A belief in God is fundamental; upon it rest the influences that control life.

Reason and faith cannot be separated without diminishing the capacity of men and women to know themselves, the world and God in an appropriate way.

Religion was important to me. My family and I were very religious. I acctualy believe the work I did was a calling from God himself.

If we believe not with faith divine and supernatural, we believe not at all.

Even if you don't believe in God, you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely — which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.

Faith, to be faith, must center around something that is not known. Faith, to be faith, must go beyond that for which there is confirming evidence. Faith, to be faith, must go into the unknown. Faith, to be faith, must walk to the edge of the light, and then a few steps into the darkness. If everything has to be known, if everything has to be explained, if everything has to be certified, then there is no need for faith. Indeed, there is no room for it.

In any spirit that isn't deformed there is the belief in God. In any spirit that is not deformed there isn't the belief in a particular God.

Most people in the West who say they believe in God actually believe in belief in God.

Faith becomes a bridge between where I am and where I want to go- it is a substance.

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.

I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not look upon science as a 'body of knowledge,' but rather as a system of hypotheses; that is to say, as a system of guesses or anticipations which in principle cannot be justified, but with which we work as long as they stand up to tests, and of which we are never justified in saying that we know they are 'true' or 'more or less certain' or even 'probable.'

I don't go to church so much, but I do believe in God and I understand the consequences of faith.

The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.