William James Quotes

Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract

Seek truth from facts.

One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

My colleagues have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it, however it may jar against their inclinations.

Principles ... become modified in practice, by facts.

What I want people to consider is that no matter what it is we want to believe, and no matter what story it is we want to jam the world into, the truth is the truth.

Facts do not constitute truth.

Science teaches us, in effect, to submit our reason to the truth and to know and judge of things as they are-that is to say, as they themselves choose to be and not as we would have them to be.

We have the right to our own opinions, but not our own facts.

An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true

Anger is frustration at the fact that we are not God, and do not have control over reality.

The world divides into facts.

Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty.

Everything isn't subjective. Reality also matters. Truth matters. It is still a word with meaning.

For scientists, reality is not optional.

I care what is actually true, even more than what I hope is true.

Emotion did not play a part in truth, only reality did.

His main principles were indeed as follows: everything it is possible to imagine can also exist.

I was pretty far gone, but not so far gone that I thought anyone with half a toehold in reality would think what we were doing was a good idea.

True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.

the curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities.

The thing about the truth is that it exists outside of belief. Even if nobody believes it, that thing is still true.

Everyone has been a witness sometime - It doesn't change it if you don't believe.

Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was the belief in facts.