Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
Interpretation
This quote illustrates the interconnectedness of human lives despite physical separations.
William James metaphorically compares lives to islands and trees, emphasizing that while individuals may seem isolated on the surface, there is a deeper connection among them that binds them together. The 'whisper' of trees and the 'hanging together' of islands suggest that relationships and underlying ties play a crucial role in our existence, promoting a sense of unity and shared experience even when outwardly separated.
In practice
In a motivational speech about teamwork and collaboration, this quote could emphasize the importance of working together.
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.
Am I motivated by what I really want out of life - or am I mass-motivated?
'Speak when you're spoken to!' The Queen sharply interrupted her. 'But if everybody obeyed that rule,' said Alice, who was always ready for a little argument, 'and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that - ' 'Ridiculous!' cried the Queen. 'Why, don't you see, child - ' here she broke off with a frown, and, after thinking for a minute, suddenly changed the subject of the conversation.
Neither fear nor self-interest can convert the soul. They may change the appearance, perhaps even the conduct, but never the object of supreme desire... Fear is the motive which constrains the slave; greed binds the selfish man, by which he is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed (James 1:14). But neither fear nor self-interest is undefiled, nor can they convert the soul. Only charity can convert the soul, freeing it from unworthy motives.
The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.
As so often before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends.
The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.
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