对于个性的最大考验在于一个人是否能够适应不断变化的社会规范而不牺牲自己的原则。

How to confront changing social conventions is a crucial challenge to one’s character.

1. Those who can adapt to the changing social conventions such as economic climate without sacrificing their principles are more likely to succeed.

2. However, an even more praiseworthy character is one who is willing to change his principles to adapt to the changing situations when those principles are out of date.

个体和整体

对于一种想法或者政策最忠实的人往往是那些对其最严厉的人。

Critical: Inclined to judge severely and find fault.

爱挑剔的倾向于进行严厉批判和找岔的

While I find this claim paradoxical on its face, the paradox is explainable, and the explanation is well supported empirically. Nevertheless, the claim is an unfair generalization in that it fails to account for other empirical evidence serving to discredit it.

A. Are commitment and criticism mutually exclusive? One possible explanation is that individuals most firmly committed to an idea or policy are often the same people who are most knowledgeable on the subject, and therefore are in the best position to understand and appreciate the problems with the idea or policy.

B. Lending credence to this explanation for the paradoxical nature of the speaker’s claim are the many historical cases of uneasy marriage between commitment to and criticism of the same idea or policy.

C. In the face of historical examples supporting the speaker’s claim are innumerable influential individuals who were zealously committed to certain ideas and policies but who were not critical of them, at least not outwardly.