William James Quotes

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

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

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.

The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in 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...

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

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

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.

True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience

Knowledge, idea, belief stands in the way of wisdom.

I like the idea of making films about ostensibly absolutely nothing. I like the irrelevant, the tangential, the sidebar excursion to nowhere that suddenly becomes revelatory. That's what all my movies are about. That and the idea that we're in possession of certainty, truth, infallible knowledge, when actually we're just a bunch of apes running around. My films are about people who think they're connected to something, although they're really not.

The truth that seems discouraging does in reality only transform the courage of those strong enough to accept it; and, in any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods.

Wide acceptance of an idea is not proof of its validity.

To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.

Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse.

There is, in short, no great idea that stupidity could not put to its own uses [....] The truth by comparison, has only one appearance and only one path, and is always at a disadvantage.

Having the ability to be brutally honest with yourself is the greatest challenge you face when creating a business model. Too often we oversell ourselves on the quality of the idea, service, or product. We don't provide an honest assessment of how we fit in the market, why customers will buy from us, and at what price.

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

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.

It is certain that the only hope of retroductive reasoning ever reaching the truth is that there may be some natural tendency toward an agreement between the ideas which suggest themselves to the human mind and those which are concerned in the laws of nature.

Truly time should be measured by events, and not by the lapse of hours.

Truth in our ideas means their power to work.

I don't know how you feel, but I feel like writing, clarity of thought, and truth have been validated because we see what happens when we get lax in those areas. I'm excited by the idea that writers like us can actually reach out and try to understand and prod and agitate the people who are in support of Trump because we have the tools to do it. We're language people and we're idea people.

Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.

People don't bother to check with anything anymore. They just like to speculate in print. We like fact-checking!