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.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the darker aspects of human existence and the foundations of civilization. It suggests that our everyday realities can often be horrifying and grim.
William James highlights the grim realities of life and civilization, suggesting that the horrors depicted by those deemed 'lunatic' are rooted in the everyday facts of our existence. He implies that society often overlooks the despair and suffering inherent in individual lives, emphasizing a sense of loneliness and helplessness that accompanies human existence.
In practice
In a speech about mental health, one might say, 'As William James noted, the lunatic's visions of horror remind us of the suffering that can exist within us all.'
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.
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 is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
Once you see that everything is unreal, you can't see why you should bother to prove it.
In India, there's a way of seeing life as a cosmic play. It's called Lila. I can watch my life, and I can see my guru playing with me.
In our totality we are born of the Earth. Our spirituality itself is earth-derived... If there is no spirituality in the earth, then there is no spirituality in ourselves
There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them. This is what people have come to expect. Its not viewed as a serious continent. Its a place of strange, bizarre and illogical things, where people dont do what common sense demands.
The worst thing about movie-making is that it's like life: nobody can go back to correct the mistakes.
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