Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second.
Interpretation
The quote encourages persistence and effort beyond initial attempts to achieve greater results.
William James emphasizes the importance of perseverance in the pursuit of goals. Many people give up after their first effort, not realizing that success may require pushing through initial challenges to discover untapped potential and resilience that lies within them. The idea is that true achievement often comes from going beyond our first limitations and exploring what we are truly capable of.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
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.
The great opportunity belongs to him who can see it, to him who can grasp it. The better part of your chance is right inside of you.
Once a man has made a commitment to a way of life, he puts the greatest strength in the world behind him. It's something we call heart power. Once a man has made this commitment, nothing will stop him short of success.
Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.
If you are different, or you have minimum possibilities, you can still succeed. I am living proof of that.
Never be discouraged, because every wrong turn attempt, when left behind you, is another step forward taking you closer to your goals.
We tend to minimize the things we can do, the goals we can accomplish, and for some equally strange reason we think other people can accomplish things that we cannot. I want you to understand that that is not true. You have deep reservoirs of talent and ability within you that you can bring to the surface and achieve all that you desire
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