The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
Interpretation
Emotions drive our actions, even if they don't always follow logic.
William James emphasizes the powerful influence of emotions on our behavior. While our feelings may not always align with rational thought, they compel us to act, highlighting the importance of understanding and managing our emotions in order to navigate life effectively.
In practice
In a speech about mental health awareness, one might say, 'Remember that while emotions can sway our decisions, they also propel us to act on what we feel.'
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.
You know, that might be the answer - to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail.
They still have negligent auditing, they still have things going for a walk, and they have no idea where they're coming from, and they have no idea where they're going. And if that's the case, how can we, as the public, trust the NSA with all of our information, with all of our private records, the permanent record of our lives?
The value of a man can only be measured with regard to other men.
From my perspective, I think the question of how we build a better future is an extremely important overarching question, and I think it's become obscured from us because we no longer think it's possible to have a meaningful conversation about the future.
It is only human supremacy, which is as unacceptable as racism and sexism, that makes us afraid of being more inclusive.
And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?
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