He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.
Interpretation
Not taking advantage of opportunities can lead to missed successes.
William James highlights the importance of seizing unique opportunities in life. He suggests that failing to embrace such moments is as detrimental as outright failure, indicating that opportunity and success often come hand in hand, and one must be willing to act to achieve their goals.
In practice
In a motivational speech about career advancement.
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.
If I had been playing for money I would have complained a long time ago that I was underpaid.
Success is ninety-nine percent failure.
The entrepreneurial journey starts with jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down.
The main purpose of production is to manufacture items of good quality for daily use in abundant supply, thereby enhancing and improving the life for everyone and it is this goal that I am dedicated.
As an actor I am always waiting for my luck to run out.
No amount of reading or memorizing will make you successful in life. It is the understanding and application of wise thought which counts.
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