Quote

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

William James

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Idea
Verification
Process
Completed
Experience
Starts
True
Useful
Truth
Function
Ideas
Name
Names
Whatever

More quotes by William James

Image
History is a bath of blood.
William James
Image
The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.
William James
Image
My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
William James
Image
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.
William James
Image
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
William James
Image
If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
William James
Image
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
William James
Image
I will act as if I do make a difference.
William James
Image
The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience and the only fulfillment we can speak of isthe reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.
William James
Image
Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
William James
Image
No one sees further into a generalization than his own knowledge of detail extends.
William James
Image
The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
William James
Image
On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.
William James
Image
The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
William James
Image
There is a voice inside which speaks and says, This is the real me!
William James
Image
You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use.
William James
Image
Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.
William James
Image
Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.
William James
Image
A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and of zological evolution as expounded by Mr. Darwin on the other.
William James
Image
Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
William James