Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Effort supposes resistance.
We cannot begin with complete doubt.
My language is the sum total of myself.
The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit.
Every new concept first comes to the mind in a judgment.
The universe ought to be presumed too vast to have any character.
It is... easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.
All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.
We do not really think, we are barely conscious, until something goes wrong.
Mere imagination would indeed be mere trifling; only no imagination is mere .
The idea does not belong to the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea.
By an object, I mean anything that we can think, i.e. anything we can talk about.
The pragmatist knows that doubt is an art which hs to be acquired with difficulty.
It is not knowing, but the love of learning, that characterizes the scientific man.
Mathematics is purely hypothetical: it produces nothing but conditional propositions.
... and it is probably that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered.
The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses.
The entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs.
There is a kink in my damned brain that prevents me from thinking as other people think.
All the greatest achievements of mind have been beyond the power of unaided individuals.
Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question.
Another characteristic of mathematical thought is that it can have no success where it cannot generalize.
Mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics.
We, one and all of us, have an instinct to pray; and this fact constitutes an invitation from God to pray.
It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last.
Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all.
There is not a single truth of science upon which we ought to bet more than about a million of millions to one.
Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.
All the progress we have made in philosophy ... is the result of that methodical skepticism which is the element of human freedom.
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust.
The one [the logician] studies the science of drawing conclusions, the other [the mathematician] the science which draws necessary conclusions.
This branch of mathematics [Probability] is the only one, I believe, in which good writers frequently get results which are entirely erroneous.
Truly, that reason upon which we plume ourselves, though it may answer for little things, yet for great decisions is hardly surer than a toss up.
The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.
A hypothesis is something which looks as if it might be true and were true, and which is capable of verification or refutation by comparison with facts.
It is a common observation that those who dwell continually upon their expectations are apt to become oblivious to the requirements of their actual situation.
A true proposition is a proposition belief which would never lead to such disappointment so long as the proposition is not understood otherwise than it was intended.
Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure nothing.
It is a common observation that a science first begins to be exact when it is quantitatively treated. What are called the exact sciences are no others than the mathematical ones.
We should chiefly depend not upon that department of the soul which is most superficial and fallible (our reason), but upon that department that is deep and sure, which is instinct.
Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason. Now the only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature, and for uniformity in general, is to suppose them results of evolution.
It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system.
Still, it will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system.
Fate then is that necessity by which a certain result will surely be brought to pass according to the natural course of events however we may vary the particular circumstances which precede the event.
When anything is present to the mind, what is the very first and simplest character to be noted in it, in every case, no matter how little elevated the object may be? Certainly, it is its presentness .
The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.
Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.
If liberty of speech is to be untrammeled from the grosser forms of constraint, the uniformity of opinion will be secured by a moral terrorism to which the respectability of society will give its thorough approval.
Whenever a man acts purposively, he acts under a belief in some experimental phenomenon. Consequently, the sum of the experimental phenomena that a proposition implies makes up its entire bearing upon human conduct.
But the extraordinary insight which some persons are able to gain of others from indications so slight that it is difficult to ascertain what they are, is certainly rendered more comprehensible by the view here taken.