An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation. — William James Copy Share Image
An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a… — 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
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
Compared with men, it is probable that brutes neither attend to abstract characters, nor have associations by similarity. Their thoughts probably pass… — William James Copy Share Image
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
So you see that the process of education, taken in a large way, may be described as nothing but the process of… — 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 ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives. — William James Copy Share Image
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract — William James Copy Share Image
If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is… — William James Copy Share Image
To begin with, our knowledge grows in spots. The spots may be large or small, but the knowledge ever grows all over...… — William James Copy Share Image
A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows. — William James Copy Share Image
A great idea goes through three stages on its way to acceptance: 1) it is dismissed as nonsense, 2) it is acknowledged… — 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
To begin with our knowledge grows in spots. ..What you first gain, ... is probably a small amount of new information, a… — William James Copy Share Image
“However inadequate our ideas of causal efficacy may be, we are less wide of the mark when we say that our ideas… — 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
Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of… — William James Copy Share Image
You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils… — William James Copy Share Image
True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to… — William James Copy Share Image
Volition . . . takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having… — William James Copy Share Image
Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have; and, second, on the habitual coupling… — 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
True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot — William James Copy Share Image
Even if matter could do every outward thing that God does, the idea of it would not work as satisfactorily, because the… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. — William James Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
