“I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth.”
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.
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William James 246
American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910Related quotes

“Those at too great a distance may, I am well aware, mistake ignorance for perspective.”
Introduction (p. 7)
The Dragons of Eden (1977)
Source: Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) p. ix.
Thus It Is, 1989, p. 151
As of a Trumpet, On Eagle's Wings, Thus It Is

“I cannot tell how the truth may be;
I say the tale as 'twas said to me.”
Canto II, stanza 22.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805)

The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
Context: I am referring to respect for the unique human being and his or her liberties and inalienable rights and to the principle that all power derives from the people. I am, in short, referring to the fundamental ideas of modern democracy.
What I am about to say may sound provocative, but I feel more and more strongly that even these ideas are not enough, that we must go farther and deeper.

Letter 2
Letters on Logic: Especially Democratic-Proletarian Logic (1906)

To Harriet Monroe (14 October 1913), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 26
General sources