It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
Interpretation
A positive attitude at the start of challenges greatly influences their success.
William James emphasizes the importance of one's mindset when embarking on challenging endeavors. He suggests that having a constructive and confident attitude at the outset is crucial and can significantly impact the eventual outcome of the task at hand. This insight highlights the psychological aspect of handling difficulties, where positivity can lead to greater success.
In practice
During a motivational speech to inspire students before exams.
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.
It's easier for me to get ready for a game on the road because you're expected to lose when you play away from home. That's a challenge to right there and that perks my competitive juices.
Anytime someone tells me that I can't do something, I want to do it more.
Just because I believed in what I was doing on the field and dedicated myself to playing the game, does that mean I'm cocky? Does that mean I'm arrogant?
A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe.
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
No, we don't control who our parents are. We don't control what color we are. We don't control what home we are born into. But we control our attitude. We control our work ethic. We control our drive and our commitment.
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