Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have… — William James Copy Share Image
[Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life… — William James Copy Share Image
“It never occurs to most of us .. that the question 'what is the truth' is no real question (being irrelative to… — William James Copy Share Image
“The notion of God, on the other hand, however inferior it may be in clearness to those mathematical notions so current in… — William James Copy Share Image
“An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously… — William James Copy Share Image
If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being… — William James Copy Share Image
Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true… — William James Copy Share Image
“Common-Law judges sometimes talk about the law, and schoolmasters talk about the latin tongue, in a way to make their hearers think… — William James Copy Share Image
“The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature… — William James Copy Share Image
“It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly… — William James Copy Share Image
“See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in… — William James Copy Share Image
“Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we… — William James Copy Share Image
Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world. — William James Copy Share
We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we… — William James Copy Share
In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who… — William James Copy Share
“Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered… — William James Copy Share
Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or… — William James Copy Share
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be. — William James Copy Share
Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them,… — William James Copy Share
“How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and… — William James Copy Share
There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere. — William James Copy Share
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. — William James Copy Share
The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes… — William James Copy Share
![“[Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience's demands, nothing being omitted.” quote by William James](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/072/william-james-228_art-of-life_pragmatism-s-only-test-of-probable-truth_942773.jpg)
