Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that our thoughts can shape our understanding and interactions with reality, whether or not they are aligned with it in advance.
William James emphasizes the role of our thoughts in guiding us to effectively engage with the world around us. He implies that what we consider to be true is determined by how well it facilitates our interactions and understanding of real situations, highlighting the dynamic nature of thought and reality.
In practice
In a discussion on how perception shapes our actions.
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.
Power is a trick. It lies where we believe it lies.
But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power...It must follow knowledge, and serve need.
The human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control.
Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.
Pride is the utter poverty of soul disguised as riches, imaginary light where in fact there is darkness.
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