[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
Interpretation
Religion seeks to align individuals with a greater, unseen truth or reality.
William James suggests that religion is fundamentally an effort to understand and connect with a deeper, unseen order in the universe. This perspective emphasizes the importance of harmony and alignment with forces that may not be immediately visible or comprehensible, reflecting a quest for meaning and belonging within a broader existential framework.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about the role of religion in society can highlight the quest for meaning.
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.
When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half filled or half empty. They just hope it's good beer.
Waterboarding should never be used as an interrogation tool. It is beneath our values.
He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
We're being sold a brand new idea of patriotism. It never occurred to me that patriotism had to be advertised. Patriotism is something you deeply felt. You didn't have to wear it on your lapel or show it in your window or on a bumper sticker. That kind of patriotism does not appeal to me at all.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.