Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
Interpretation
We often do not reach our full potential and live life in a state of half-awareness.
William James suggests that individuals frequently fall short of their true capabilities and aspirations, living in a state of complacency rather than striving for their fullest potential. This 'half awake' condition impedes personal growth and leaves many unaware of the richness of life and the opportunities available to them.
In practice
In a motivational speech about the importance of self-improvement.
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.
A sentimentalist is one who delights to have high and devout emotions stirred whilst reading in an arm-chair, or in a prayer meeting, but he never translates his emotions into action. Consequently a sentimentalist is usually callous, self-centred and selfish, because the emotions he likes to have stirred do not cost him anything.
LOSS, n. Privation of that which we had, or had not. Thus, in the latter sense, it is said of a defeated candidate that he "lost his election".
When you cannot be deceived by men you will have realised the wisdom of strategy.
In many cases, if we knew what it would take, we might have thought twice about it, so it's often wonderful that we don't have hindsight.
Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.
One half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.
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