We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
Interpretation
Understanding the truth requires recognizing its opposite.
William James highlights that the comprehension of a true statement is often contingent upon our grasp of its negation. Only when we understand what is false can we fully appreciate the significance and implications of the truth, as this contrast sharpens our perception and understanding of reality.
In practice
In a philosophical debate about the nature of reality.
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 am a spark from the Infinite. _x000D_ I am not flesh and bones. _x000D_ I am light.
It is however a disgrace to pray! Not for all, but for you, and me, and whoever has his a conscience.
Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.
The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity.
Having children is something we think we ought to do because our parents did it, but when it is over the children are just other members of the human race, rather disappointingly.
The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.
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