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.
Interpretation
Misinterpretations of truth are detrimental, especially in discussions with manipulative individuals.
William James highlights the dangers of communicating honest truths to those who distort or misunderstand them, suggesting that reasoned arguments and appeals to virtue are futile when faced with individuals who are inherently deceitful and manipulative. The metaphor of 'human crocodiles and boa-constrictors' illustrates the idea that some people are not open to genuine discourse, making rational engagement a wasted effort.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a debate about the nature of truth in politics.
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
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
The society exists for the benefit of its members; not its members for the benefit of the society.
I want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same.
It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
We know that we cannot live together without rules which tell us what is right and what is wrong, what is permitted and what is prohibited. We know that it is law which enables men to live together, that creates order out of chaos. We know that law is the glue that holds civilization together.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
Value is the most invincible and impalpable of ghosts, and comes and goes unthought of, while the visible and dense matter remains as it was.
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