William James on Truth
1842–1910 United States
← All quotes by William James
4 quotes
There is but one indefectibly certain truth, and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, — the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.
The Will to Believe (1897)
Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
The Principles of Psychology (1890)
For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one's own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity.