For every five well-adjusted and smoothly functioning Americans, there are two who never had the chance to discover themselves. It may well be because they have never been alone with themselves.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Wherever I have gone in this country, I have found Americans.
Ninety per cent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves - so how can we know anyone else?
We were from totally different social backgrounds. This is what is very hard for an American to understand, but we could have been five guys from Mars.
Americans are a quarter of a billion people who have almost nothing in common except for the fact they've been told they have lots in common.
People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.
One of the illusions that we live by is that we can really know anybody else, and we're often surprised by traits in people that we thought we knew very well. The struggle to overcome loneliness, which is sort of our universal burden, leads us to leap to conclusions about who other people are.
It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.
When you get to know a lot of people, you make a great discovery. You find that no one group has a monopoly on looks, brains, goodness or anything else. It takes all the people - black and white, Catholic, Jewish and Protestant, recent immigrants and Mayflower descendants - to make up America.
There's a deep-seated paranoia that Americans have about not being Americans or something.
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