My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.
Interpretation
Focusing on one task at a time enhances effectiveness and clarity in action.
This quote by William James emphasizes the importance of concentrating one's thoughts and efforts on a singular task to achieve meaningful results. By acknowledging that our thinking should serve our actions, James advocates for a disciplined approach to productivity where multitasking is minimized in favor of deep engagement with one responsibility at a time.
In practice
This quote can be used during a workshop on time management to emphasize the importance of focus.
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.
I saved a man's life once," said Granny. "Special medicine, twice a day. Boiled water with a bit of berry juice in it. Told him I'd bought it from the dwarves. That's the biggest part of doct'rin, really. Most people'll get over most things if they put their minds to it, you just have to give them an interest.
criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person's precious pride, hurt his sense of importace and arouse resentment.
The best way to get people to think outside the box is not to create the box in the first place.
I remember my first visit with my guru. He had shown that he read my mind. So I looked at the grass and I thought, 'My god, he's going to know all the things I don't want people to know.' I was really embarrassed. Then I looked up and he was looking directly at me with unconditional love.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.
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