17 December 2005

"The average man develops only ten percent of his latent mental ability" wrote Lowell Thomas in a foreword to the 1936 Dale Carnegie book How to Win Friends and Influence People - a claim he attributed to William James. And although this isn't at all true, it's the kind of "factoid" which tends to do quite well because people have a vested interest in believing in it - we want it to be true. Could I get away with something like: It's a little known fact that on average most people only use 10% of their democracy.

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