The chief cause of problems is solutions.
Eric SevareidRead
The biggest big business in America is not steel, automobiles, or television. It is the manufacture, refinement and distribution of anxiety.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that anxiety is a major industry in America, influencing people's lives more than traditional businesses.
Eric Sevareid emphasizes that anxiety has become a pervasive and monetizable aspect of American life, overshadowing more tangible industries such as steel, automobiles, or television. This highlights how societal pressures, fears, and stressors are not just personal experiences but are also commodified and managed by various sectors, making anxiety a significant cultural and economic force.
In practice
In a speech about mental health awareness, this quote can be used to underline the societal impact of anxiety.
Let our lives be in accordance with our convictions of right, each striving to carry out our principles.
If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible what was the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men had forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.'
Nothing else matters much...not wealth, nor learning, nor even health...without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.
Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.
I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats.
Have you noticed that life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in newspapers?
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