It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
Interpretation
A positive attitude at the start of challenges greatly influences their success.
William James emphasizes the importance of one's mindset when embarking on challenging endeavors. He suggests that having a constructive and confident attitude at the outset is crucial and can significantly impact the eventual outcome of the task at hand. This insight highlights the psychological aspect of handling difficulties, where positivity can lead to greater success.
In practice
During a motivational speech to inspire students before exams.
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.
He used to tell me, 'Do what you like to do. It'll probably turn out to be what you do best.
Pessimism doesn't grow your business or even maintain the status quo. The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities.
My whole life, people have doubted me. My mom did. People told me in high school I'm too short and not fast enough to play basketball. They didn't know my story. Because if they did, they'd know that anything is possible.
Rallying is a sport in which accidents do happen. You have to respect the conditions you face.
Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Whatever you're scared of doing, Do it.
Doctors and scientists said breaking the four-minute mile was impossible, that one would die in the attempt. Thus, when I got up from the track after collapsing at the finish line, I figured I was dead
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