pain-and-fear

Updated: May 18, 2025

Meanwhile men at large still live as they always have lived, under a pain-and-fear economy for those of us who live in an ease-economy are but an island in the stormy ocean and the whole atmosphere of present-day Utopian literature tastes mawkish and dishwatery to people who still keep a sense for life's more bitter flavors. It suggests, in truth, ubiquitous inferiority.

William James - Memories and Studies