Word: proneness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Lieberman found that 19th-Century youngsters were prone to ponder morosely on such subjects as Hypocrisy, Temptation, Time, Death. Their poetic style, though reflective and unhurried, was stiff, conventional, smacked of grown-up inspiration. Far from conventional were the poems that Dr. Lieberman collected from classrooms of his pupils (aged 12 to 16) for the 1941 anthology...
Teachers, as a class, are prone to indecision, and inaction. It is a professional disease. It is the result, perhaps, of an unusual opportunity to see the pros and cons of every situation, and to discover those hidden factors, the ignorance of which makes it relatively easy for the layman to act. Teachers at Harvard are, if anything, less subject to this disease than the average member of their profession. They are more free from outside pressures towards conformity and inaction; they are more willing to differ openly among themselves: witness last year's two opposing faculty groups, American Defense...
Hoppy began to detect a change in undergraduates about 1931. He considered them irresponsible, purposeless, prone to self-pity. Said he: "One frequently gets the impression of a hitchhiking generation." He assailed the New Deal for its effect "on the imagination and aspiration of youth," told a graduating class: "No real friend of yours could wish that you should never face misfortune. ... It is not so that vigor of mind or strength of character is developed...
...nearly six feet tall, weighs 195 Ib. At 14, the Old Man was already a perfectionist, with eight years of painstaking practice behind him. When he made a sour shot, he would turn purple, talk purple, fling his club toward the next county. Young Bobby is happy-go-lucky, prone to grin rather than groan when he misses a three-foot putt. At 14, the Old Man could break 70.* Young Bobby is happy if he can break...
Bald, tight-lipped Henry J. Kaiser is one of those American industrial geniuses that average Americans are prone to take for granted until the country gets in a jam. A fabulously successful engineer, he refuses to believe in clocks or calendars. When he turned 50, he started counting his birthdays backwards; outside of his family, no one knows how old he is now. Within the limits of the day's 24 hours, he manages to be president of 15 companies and director of 20 more-and active in every one of his 35 jobs. Although his engineering feats...