#iv

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory. ↗

— Charles Horton Cooley

#conviction #decorative #everything #fluency #forcible

If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted. ↗

— Charles Horton Cooley

#becomes #between #broken #character #discrepancy

To have no heroes is to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self. ↗

— Charles Horton Cooley

#back #heroes #live #momentum #narrow

Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also. ↗

— Charles Horton Cooley

#also #art #cannot #generally #individual

The general fact is that the most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation. ↗

— Charles Horton Cooley

#control #effective #effective way #energy #fact

We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on. We always imagine, and in imagining share, the judgments of the other mind. ↗

— Charles Horton Cooley

#ashamed #brave #cowardly #evasive #eyes

Living alone makes it harder to find someone to blame. ↗

— Mason Cooley

#blame #find #harder #living #living alone

Reality is the name we give to our disappointments. ↗

— Mason Cooley

#give #name #our #reality

Mistakes are the only universal form of originality. ↗

— Mason Cooley

#mistakes #only #originality #universal

Cynicism is full of naive disappointments. ↗