“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 James246
American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910Related quotes
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Canto II, stanza 22.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805)
Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic
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.
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To Harriet Monroe (14 October 1913), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 26
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