In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the struggle between knowing what we should do and the difficulty of taking action.
William James points out a common human experience: we often have an intuitive understanding of our responsibilities and goals, yet we find ourselves unable to initiate the actions necessary to fulfill them. This internal conflict can lead to frustration and self-doubt, as we grapple with the gap between our knowledge and our behavior.
In practice
In a motivational speech to encourage people to overcome procrastination.
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 still pushing the edge of what my body can do.
No road is to long for him who advances slowly and does not hurry and no attainment is beyond his reach who equips himself with patience to achieve it
Running makes you an athlete in all areas of life...trained in the basics, prepared for whatever comes, ready to fill each hour and deal with the decisive moment.
I always say: a run in the morning is like eating a fruit a day - it chases he doctor away. It is good for your mind.
If you are different, or you have minimum possibilities, you can still succeed. I am living proof of that.
I learned early that I had to work harder than the white kids and harder than the boys.
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