大学英语四级考试(Cet4)阅读理解模拟练习题

It is doing something better than other people that makes us unique. Yet a surprising number of people still see individuality as a surface thing. They wear bright clothes, dye their hair strange colors and decorate their skin with tattoos (纹身) to make some kind of social statement.

The whole purpose of individuality is excellence. The people who comprehend the simple principle of being unique through performance make our entire political and economic system work. Those who invent, who improve, who know more about a subject than other people do, and who take something that doesnt work and make it workthese people are the very soul of capitalism.

Charles Kettering didnt like the idea of cranking a car to make it start, so he invented the electric starter. Henry Ford figured out the assembly-line technique and made it possible to mass-produce automobiles. Lewis Waterman saw no need to go on dipping a pen into an inkwell, so he put the ink into the pen. George Westinghouse told the world how to stop a train, and Elisha Otis, inventor of the elevator, indirectly created the city skyline. These people understood that individualism means working at the top of ones capacity.

Fortunately, enough Americans have been inspired to do something with their uniqueness that we have developed in less than three centuries from a frontier outpost into not only a country of freedom but a country strong enough to protect that freedom. These people prized the notions of individuality and excellence above all things and thus kept the great machine functioning. The ones with the purple hair and the horrorable jewelry are just along for the ride, trying to be different and not knowing how to go about it.