No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
Interpretation
No matter how low someone may feel, there is always someone who looks up to or imitates them.
This quote by William James highlights the idea that every individual's actions and behaviors, regardless of their circumstances or perceived failures, make an impact on others. It reminds us that even those who feel they have hit rock bottom can influence someone else, serving as a powerful reminder of the interconnectedness of human experience and the potential for everyone to serve as a role model, even in their most challenging moments.
In practice
In a discussion about resilience after failure, this quote can inspire others to recognize their influence.
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.
My company survives because I've learned to respect the ideas of people younger than me and recognize when my wisdom is obsolete.
Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are.
Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
My grandmother always told me that regardless of what the world gives you, stay humble. Stay strong in your beliefs, and be honest. And when you're wrong, be a man and say you're wrong. And be strong when you're right.
As long as you keep one foot in the real world while the other foot's in a fairy tale, that fairy tale is going to seem kind of attainable.
I felt in a lot of instances I was deliberately being put through stress because when you're a guy who generates money, people have a vested interest in controlling you.
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