The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
Interpretation
Fear of poverty can corrupt the integrity of educated individuals and society as a whole.
William James highlights the detrimental impact that the fear of poverty has on the educated classes. This pervasive fear can lead to moral decay, influencing decisions and values in ways that prioritize financial security over ethical principles, ultimately harming the fabric of civilization itself.
In practice
In a discussion about economic policies, one might quote James to emphasize the need for ethical considerations over mere profit.
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.
War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.
So long ago, was it in a dream, was it just a dream?
a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up oneβs watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.
Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds
On the night that the Second World war was declared, there were crowds in the street. It was a summer's night and there was a blackout. On every side you heard people crying: 'Look at the moon!' The moon had been there every minute of their lives and they'd never seen it.
People's ability to forget what they do not want to know, to overlook what is before their eyes, was seldom put to the test better than in Germany at that time.
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