Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its string can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it.
Interpretation
Our perception of evil can change dramatically based on our attitude towards it.
William James suggests that much of what we perceive as evil arises from our personal response to situations. By shifting our mindset from fear to courage, we can transform negative experiences into opportunities for strength and resilience. Embracing rather than avoiding challenges can lead to personal growth and a sense of empowerment.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to encourage people to confront their fears.
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.
Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.
It is so fatally easy to confuse an aesthetic appreciation of the spiritual life with the life itself-to dream that you have waked, washed, and dressed and then to find yourself still in bed.
The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth.
It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts.
He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.
Whatever is arising in this moment, whatever condition, is part of the isness of life and therefore accepting it fully makes you an expression of the enormous power of life itself-true intelligence, which only comes when you stop obstructing the power of the present moment.
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