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.
Too many people hold a very narrow view of what motivates us. They believe that the only way to get us moving is with the jab of a stick or the promise of a carrot. But if you look at over 50 years of research on motivation, or simply scrutinize your own behavior, it's pretty clear human beings are more complicated than that.
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Now, everything I do, I do because I want to. And I believe the best is yet to come.
You are important enough to ask and you are blessed enough to receive back.
Once you have commitment, you need the discipline and hard work to get you there.
I would rather fail trying than succeed at doing nothing.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.