An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true — William James Copy Share Image
The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires. — William James Copy Share Image
Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one — William James Copy Share Image
I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather I fear to lose truth by the pretension to possess it… — William James Copy Share Image
“In truths dependent on our personal action, then, faith based on desire is certainly a lawful and possibly an indispensable thing.” — William James Copy Share Image
... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really… — William James Copy Share Image
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood. — 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
I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess… — William James Copy Share Image
I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true… — William James Copy Share Image
Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and… — William James Copy Share Image
“Believe truth! Shun error!-these, we see, are two materially different laws; and by choosing between them we may end by coloring differently… — William James Copy Share Image
“There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it positively refuses to account… — William James Copy Share Image
Truth is what works. Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so… — William James Copy Share Image
Our theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the truths… — William James Copy Share Image
Better risk loss of truth than chance of error--that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much… — William James Copy Share Image
True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the… — William James Copy Share Image
The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much… — William James Copy Share Image
Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process:… — William James Copy Share Image
The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite,… — William James Copy Share Image
There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and… — William James Copy Share Image
Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it — William James Copy Share Image
True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot — William James Copy Share Image
There is but one indefectibly certain truth , and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, the truth that… — William James Copy Share Image
Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means… — William James Copy Share Image
To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off… — William James Copy Share Image
Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance… — William James Copy Share Image
Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results. — William James Copy Share Image
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and… — William James Copy Share Image
“The pragmatic method starts from the postulate that there is no difference of truth that doesn’t make a difference of fact somewhere;… — William James Copy Share Image
When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not… — William James Copy Share Image
... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not… — William James Copy Share Image
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in… — 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
The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply… — William James Copy Share Image
“Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. The fundamental conceptions of psychology are practically very clear to us,… — 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
