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There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.

William James

Our faith is faith in someone else’s faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.
WILLIAM JAMES

Cases Matter Philosophical
The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man’s thoughts and another’s.
WILLIAM JAMES

Barriers Immutable Men
Mankind’s common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism.
WILLIAM JAMES

Heroism Reality Theatre
With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
WILLIAM JAMES

Good Hell Intention Intentions
Man, biologically considered … is simply the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own kind.
WILLIAM JAMES

Beast Kind Men
All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.
WILLIAM JAMES

Contradiction Happiness Natural
The difference between objective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context solely.
WILLIAM JAMES

Differences Extensions Relation
Men’s activities are occupied into ways — in grappling with external circumstances and in striving to set things at one in their own topsy-turvy mind.
WILLIAM JAMES

Men Mind Way
A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith’s usual result.
WILLIAM JAMES

Inward Paradise Usual
For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
WILLIAM JAMES

Attend Moments Reality
No bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.
WILLIAM JAMES

Bells Tolls Truth
So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.
WILLIAM JAMES

Children Effortless Reading Sky
[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
WILLIAM JAMES

Grace Order Unseen
Truth is something that happens to an idea.
WILLIAM JAMES

Happen Ideas Truth
We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
WILLIAM JAMES

Choices Differences Men Savage
Pure experience’ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
WILLIAM JAMES

Flux Names Reflection

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.

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There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.

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Popular Authors

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