Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio--empt...y boasting of American power, American virtue, American know-how--has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades.... Here at home--within the family, so to speak--our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helpin...g hand to others. It's a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only sure way of avoiding these evils [vanity and boasting] is never to speak of yourself at all. But when, historically, you ...are obliged to mention yourself, take care not to drop one single word that can directly or indirectly be construed as fishing for applause.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Boasting is often carried by certain Americans to the extreme. Often however it is a reaction against slights, an effort to veil d...eficiencies, an effort made by a people aware of them, but on the other hand conscious of having accomplished in two or three generations what it took other nations centuries to perform. Generally, human nature revolts at taunts, at arrogant reproof, at undervaluation. Experience and time alone teach a becoming equanimity. European nations bear scoffing more patiently because they have thrown it occasionally for centuries at each other's head. Like old war horses accustomed to the roar of battles, they remain cool and self-possessed. There is on the American surface much to be rubbed off and rounded. Rude angles are to be soft ened, ease, flexibility instilled. Time must do the work. Refinement is a fruit slowly ripened by ages.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Moderation is a fear of falling into that envy and contempt which those who grow giddy with their good fortune quite justly draw u...pon themselves. It is a vain boasting of the greatness of our mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »