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About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker says a concrete person cares only about being right, using any means to achieve it.
In plain terms
A person wants to be right at any cost.
What can you take from it?
Beware of the desire to be right that blinds judgment.

Where it applies

  • debates
  • decision making

Putting it to work

  • value truth over ego
  • stay open to alternative views

Questions to consider

  • When is seeking correctness beneficial?
  • How to balance confidence and humility?

Another view

Not all pursuit of correctness is harmful; it can drive rigor.

More from William James

  1. Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do…

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  2. Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves …

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  3. The necessity of faith as an ingredient in our mental attitude is strongly insisted on by the scientific philosophers of the present day; but by a singularly a…

    Permalink to quote #11

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