Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
Interpretation
True quality, regardless of its cost, is ultimately valuable and should be prioritized over mere monetary considerations.
William James highlights that when one is in pursuit of quality, the ultimate achievement of superior quality comes at a price that is insignificant compared to its worth. This suggests that prioritizing true excellence, whether in experiences or possessions, brings greater value than the financial cost associated with it.
In practice
In a presentation about business ethics, one could quote this to stress the importance of quality over cost.
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.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
It is much more intelligent, more practical, to be good rather than evil.
By positional play a master tries to prove and exploit true values, whereas by combinations he seeks to refute false values ... A combination produces an unexpected re-assessment of values.
People always make the mistake of calling an idea small or stupid because they don't understand how it's going to evolve.
When you learn your lessons, the pain goes away.
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