William James Quotes

I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives

Truth is what works.

[Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience's demands, nothing being omitted.

Reason is a bee, and exists only on what it makes; his usefulness takes the place of beauty.

Coolidge's preference for experience over ideas was a deeply rooted trait.

Truth happens to an idea

The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.

Truth in our ideas means their power to work.

I try to be as realistic as possible.

The third principle is that any philosophic knowledge is only valuable if it is true or if it works.

Ideas are useless unless used.

True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot

A false argument should be refuted, not named. That's the basic idea behind freedom of speech. Arguments by name-calling, rather than truth and light, can generally be presumed fraudulent.

The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away.

The most ancient parts of truth . . . also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They also mediated between still earlier truths and what in those days were novel observations. Purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment the function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts played no role whatsoever, is nowhere to be found. The reasons why we call things true is the reason why they are true, for to be true means only to perform this marriage-function.

You ought to choose both physician and friend, not the most agreeable, but the most useful.

To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you cannot eat.

You have to look life straight in the eye. De-mystify your world. Can you really afford to believe magic is for real? Not when time is concerned.

People are far more interested in what works than what's true.

All the good things of the world are no further good to us than as they are of use; and of all we may heap up we enjoy only as much as we can use, and no more.

If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. How much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged.

Idea and experience will never coincide in the center; only through art and action are they united.

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

Truth then seems to me, in the proper import of the word, to signify nothing but the joining or separating of Signs, as the Things signified by them do agree or disagree one with another. The joining or separating of signs here meant, is what by another name we call proposition. So that truth properly belongs only to propositions: whereof there are two sorts, viz. mental and verbal; as there are two sorts of signs commonly made use of, viz. ideas and words.