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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.

William James

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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Humans
Challenges
Arguments
Hear
Sympathy
Justice
Appeals
Politics
Dealing
Lying
Folly
Crocodiles
Political
Reasonable
Magnanimity
Truth
Argument
Persuasion
Human
Worse
Misunderstood

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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
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The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party.
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If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.
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It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
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First... a new theory is attacked as absurd then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
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Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
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True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.
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I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives
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The most natively interesting object to a man is his own personal self and its fortunes. We accordingly see that the moment a thing becomes connected with the fortunes of the self, it forthwith becomes an interesting thing.
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The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
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Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.
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Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.
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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
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When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
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Man can change his life simply by changing his attitude.
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In all primary school work the principle of multiple impressions is well recognized.
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Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.
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No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.
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The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.
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All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.
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