The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
Interpretation
Philosophy often reflects the diverse personalities and emotional perspectives of its thinkers.
This quote by William James suggests that the development of philosophical ideas is not just an abstract pursuit of knowledge but is deeply intertwined with the unique temperaments and emotional dispositions of the philosophers themselves. The varying personalities of thinkers lead to different interpretations and conflicts in philosophical thought, showcasing how human emotions and character shape intellectual discourse.
In practice
During a lecture on philosophy, one might say, 'As William James noted, the history of philosophy reveals the interplay of diverse human temperaments.'
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.
To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't white.
If the Savior has not sanctified you, renewed you, given you a hatred of sin and a love of holiness, He has nothing in you of a saving character.
Rash indeed is he who reckons on tomorrow, or happily on the days beyond it; for tomorrow is not, until today is past.
If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.
Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God.
Fifty years after half a million gypsies were exterminated in the Second World War - thousands of them in Auschwitz - we're again preparing the mass killing of this minority.
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