“Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.”
Lectures IV and V, "The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
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William James 246
American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910Related quotes

“The secret of joy is: To know the world and its evil powers … and still preserve the hope.”
Joy: Share it! p.54.
Joy: Share it! (2017)

Quoted by Alan Magee, in Paintings, Sculpture, Graphics., Forum Gallery, New York, 2004
posthumous

“Let ignorance talk as it will, learning has its value.”
Laissez dire les sots: le savoir a son prix.
Book VIII (1678-1679), fable 19 (The Use of Knowledge).
Fables (1668–1679)

Speech to University students (1959)
The Four Agreements (1997)

“Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.”

“There is no inspiration in evil and no power except for its own destruction.”
The Secret of Efficient Expression (1911)
“I still think its probably the most evil of all pursuits.”
On war.
Don Swaim interview (1975)
Context: I still think its probably the most evil of all pursuits.... the thing is when you're getting shot at you don't think so much about who's right and who's wrong or who's good and who's and bad... one of the first things they told you was "Forget about patriotism. That's not how you win a war. You win a war by being a vicious, merciless, mean, son-of-a-bitch." And, they try to infuse that in everybody, and I think rightly so.