In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the struggle of knowing what we should do yet failing to take action.
William James highlights the inner conflict many people face between the awareness of their responsibilities and the inertia that prevents them from acting. This refers to the mental barriers that can hinder us from making positive changes or taking necessary steps to progress, despite our conscious understanding of what needs to be done.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming procrastination.
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.
Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitudes.
that expression you get in your eyes when you are very tired and everything is like a dream and you are starting to know what things are like underneath what people say they are.
A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
Your problem is you're... too busy holding onto your unworthiness.
Move forward and let others do the same. Simple. This is a guiding principle everyone should have.
To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.
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