We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans - convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Americans often view foreigners as incomplete versions of themselves. This belief drives a desire to force them to evolve quickly.
- In plain terms
- We see foreigners as unfinished and try to force them to become like us.
- What can you take from it?
- Avoid viewing others as incomplete versions of your own culture.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Do we see others as complete?
- Is evolution forced useful?
Another view
Some cultural adaptation is necessary for international relations.
More from Saul Bellow
There's something that remains barbarous in educated people, and lately I've more and more had the feeling that we are nonwondering primitives. And why is it t…
Permalink to quote #42 Much of junk culture has a core of crisis - shoot-outs, conflagrations, bodies weltering in blood, naked embracers or rapist-stranglers. The sounds of junk cul…
Permalink to quote #44 In politics continental Europe was infantile - horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasur…
Permalink to quote #41
Related quotes
American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good wi…
George SantayanaGeorge Santayana quote #3 'Mustn't grumble' was the most English of expressions. English patience was mingled inertia and despair. What was the use? But Americans did nothing but grumbl…
Paul TherouxPaul Theroux quote #4 When jazz is played in another nation, it is called American. When it is played in another country, it sounds false. Jazz is the result of the energy stored up…
George GershwinGeorge Gershwin quote #9