William James Quotes

Since Plato, we have been considering the nature of knowledge, the meaning of meaning and the status of the physical world.

Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.

Truth happens to an idea

In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

Science is nothing but perception.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.

Facts are better than dreams.

Human thought by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths.

[It's] troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that's often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.

Now, what I want is, Facts. . . . Facts alone are wanted in life.

The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about reality.

Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.

Knowledge, or more expressively truth,--for knowledge is truth received into our intelligence,--truth is an ideal whole.

If our minds could get hold of one abstract truth, they would be immortal so far as that truth is concerned. My trouble is to find out how we can get hold of the truth at all.

... no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.

Thinking does not lead to truth; truth is the beginning of thought.

Truth is that which cannot be proved false.

What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?

Can I reject everything my brain experienced? Is intellectual understanding any understanding at all?

Is not the truth the truth?

Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.

If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.

All true knowledge contradicts common sense.