“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
Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him… — William James Copy Share Image
If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given… — 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
Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges… — 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
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
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
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
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
A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience… — 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
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
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
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
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
“I fear to lose truth by the pretension to possess it already wholly.” — William James Copy Share Image
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
I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable… — 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
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
Essential truth, the truth of the intellectualists, the truth with no one thinking it, is like the coat that fits tho no… — 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
“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
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
