4 quotations linked to The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by or associated with William James, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Belief, doubt, truth, error, freedom, decision, moral choice and the limits of purely intellectual suspension.
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“We must know the truth; and we must avoid error.”
James separates two intellectual duties—seeking truth and avoiding falsehood—to show that prioritizing one over the other can produce different habits of belief and inquiry.
Source note: The Will to Believe, essay “The Will to Believe”; Project Gutenberg #26659. James immediately argues that truth-seeking and error-avoidance are distinct laws rather than two phrasings of one command.
“Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things.”
James resists treating every possible intellectual mistake as catastrophic, because an excessive fear of error can itself prevent inquiry, experience and the possibility of gaining truth.
Source note: The Will to Believe, essay “The Will to Believe”; Project Gutenberg #26659. James is contrasting the risk of being mistaken with the cost of refusing every uncertain intellectual venture.
“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”
James treats belief as an active stance toward uncertain possibilities: confidence does not prove that life will go well, but it can influence whether a person engages with life as something capable of being made worthwhile.
Source note: “Is Life Worth Living?” in The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, Project Gutenberg #26659. James explicitly says the “scientific proof” may remain unclear; the passage is philosophical encouragement about action under uncertainty, not empirical proof that belief guarantees outcomes.
“Our first act of freedom, if we are free, ought in all inward propriety to be to affirm that we are free.”
Within James’s argument about determinism, the sentence treats belief in freedom as a performative commitment: if freedom is real, affirming it is itself an appropriate exercise of it.
Source note: The Will to Believe, essay “The Dilemma of Determinism”; Project Gutenberg #26659. This is a philosophical argument about free will, not an empirical proof that metaphysical freedom has been established.