Charles Horton Cooley Quotes
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, 1864-1929, Sociologist, Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In the early 21st century America’s world image, credibility, and popularity had plummeted to new lows. The George W. Bush administration spent millions of dollars on public diplomacy – public relations, propaganda, and image building using the techniques of Madison Avenue to change the world perception of America. Veteran diplomats like Kissinger advised that the Bush was going about it backwards. If America did the right things, world opinion would appreciate it and America’s credibility will follow as it has throughout most of the 20th century. Most foreign politicians and journalists tended to agree. It had been Bush’s policies and practices that had been disliked. They were understood, it was argued, and did not need to be better explained—just changed.
Charles Horton Cooley was an American sociologist and the son of Michigan Supreme Court Judge Thomas M. Cooley. He studied and went on to teach economics and sociology at the University of Michigan, was a founding member of the American Sociological Association in 1905 and became its eighth president in 1918. He is perhaps best known for his concept of the looking-glass self, which is the concept that a person's self grows out of society's interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others. Cooley's health began to deteriorate in 1928. He was diagnosed with an unidentified form of cancer in March 1929 and died two months later.
