William James Quotes

True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as.

They may well say not only is this not true, but I will put in an injunction to prevent publication. No, stories don't go in unless I'm convinced by the people who write them that they're true. And if I'm wrong, then so be it.

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.

No one is served or benefitted by believing in false or faulty ideas.

I have a rule in research: The third time you hear something, it's generally true.

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.

We have to challenge lies. We have to challenge falsehoods and conspiracy theories. If you don't, they fester - unchecked and unchallenged.

He, who knows how to distinguish between true and false, must have an adequate idea of true and false.

The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.

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

Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have so carefully posited 'reality' ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist.

Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming me.

It's important to get the facts straight, a lot of information out there isn't right.

In the world of knowledge, the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with effort.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.

No," said the priest, "you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary." "Depressing view," said K. "The lie made into the rule of the world.

I suppose it's knowing when you've come up with an idea that works, when you've got it right, whatever it is.

I have no problem with being vetted. What I do have a problem with is being lied about and then putting that as truth.

...a distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man's imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.

This world is not a vale of sorrows if you will recognize discriminatingly what is truly excellent in it; and if you will avail yourself of it for mutual happiness and well-being. Therefore, let us explain as often as possible, and particularly at the departure of life, that we base our faith on firm foundations, on Truth for putting into action our ideas which do not depend on fables and ideas which Science has long ago proven to be false.

Why do you keep maintaining your ideas are right if you can't prove them?

A hundred suspicions don't make a proof.

Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.

Fact and fiction carry the same intrinsic weight in the marketplace of ideas. Fortunately, reality has no advertising budget.