Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.
Interpretation
Truth is defined by the consistency of our ideas with reality, while falsity indicates a lack of such consistency.
In this quote, William James asserts that truth is not an intrinsic property but rather a reflection of how well our ideas correspond to reality. He contrasts truth with falsity, suggesting that a true idea aligns with the reality it represents, while a false idea does not. This perspective emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and the evaluation of our beliefs against the world as it exists.
In practice
In a classroom setting to discuss the nature of truth in philosophy.
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.
I never aimed to be on television or in the press. We all have a personal life, and being a public figure disrupts that.
The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
Do not fix hopes on your health, and do not laugh away life. Remember how they walked and now all their joints lie separately, and the tongue with which they talked lightly is eaten away by the worms
I went looking for embodiments of pure evil, but found ordinary people.
The art of living lies not in eliminating but in growing with troubles.
Your will is the ego part of you that believes you're separate from others, separate from what you'd like to accomplish or have, and separate from God. It also believes that you are your acquisitions, achievements, and accolades. This ego will wants you to constantly acquire evidence of your importance... On the other hand, your imagination is the concept of Spirit within you. ...with imagination, we have the power to be anything we desire to be.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.