It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
Interpretation
Understanding the principles of association can clarify complex mental processes.
William James emphasizes the importance of grasping foundational principles to effectively explain the intricate mental operations we engage in. Once we understand how our thoughts and experiences are interconnected through association, we gain a clearer insight into the workings of our minds, making it easier to articulate and comprehend complex cognitive processes.
In practice
In a psychology lecture about cognitive functions.
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.
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.
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.
We have to embrace the good over the bad. That has to be one's personal project.
Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller, and that's the secret weapon of the bookstore - is that no algorithm will ever understand readers the way that other readers can understand readers.
You should be convinced of the authenticity of what you have, but you must also be humble enough to say that we don't know everything. And since we don't know everything, we must accept that another person may believe something else.
You will not be carried to Heaven lying at ease upon a feather bed.
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