Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new… — William James Copy Share Image
The most ancient parts of truth . . . also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They… — William James Copy Share Image
The war-function has grasped us so far; but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the… — William James Copy Share Image
The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself. — William James Copy Share Image
The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience; and the only fulfillment we can speak of… — William James Copy Share Image
So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to… — William James Copy Share Image
We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions. — William James Copy Share Image
True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience — 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
