If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.
Interpretation
Challenging widely held beliefs can be achieved by presenting a single counterexample.
William James emphasizes the importance of counterexamples in philosophical reasoning. He suggests that rather than finding evidence to disprove a generalization, such as the notion that all crows are black, it is sufficient to present just one instance that contradicts it, thereby demonstrating that the generalization is flawed. This highlights the power of individual evidence in reshaping our understanding of truths and beliefs.
In practice
In a debate on generalizations, this quote can be used to illustrate how a single contrary instance can challenge established norms.
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.
She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, - truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence.
I always say that my favorite people to interview are the people who are at the beginning and the ends of their lives because they have two alternate perspectives of the world, and neither of them are less profound.
The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State.
People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them.
The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.
I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character... by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none.
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