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.
Simple, genuine goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out of this world with us.
Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.
You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your perception...you see what is, where most people see what they expect.
Simply put, you believer that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.
It's surprisingly nice out here, peaceful and pretty-strange to be standing in the middle of a little garden while enclosed by the massive stone walls of the prison, like being at the exact center of a hurricane, and finding peace and silence in the middle of so much shrieking damage.
Lack of confidence is what makes you want to change somebody else's mind. When you're OK, you don't need to convince anyone else in order to empower yourself.
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