AMERICA QUOTES VI
quotations about America
Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The American Dream means giving it your all, trying your hardest, accomplishing something. And then I'd add to that, giving something back. No definition of a successful life can do anything but include serving others.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
interview, Academy of Achievement, Jun. 2, 1995
America has been the New World in all tongues, to all peoples, not because this continent was a new-found land, but because all those who came here believed they could create upon this continent a new life -- a life that should be new in freedom.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Third Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1941
No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
First Inaugural Address, Apr. 30, 1789
The fact that the Constitution is sufficiently open-ended to infuriate all Americans almost equally is part of its enduring genius.
DAHLIA LITHWICK
"Read It and Weep: How the Tea Party's fetish for the Constitution as written may get it in trouble", Slate, January 4, 2011
It's one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Main Street
The people of America are red, white, black, yellow, and all the shades in between. Their eyes are blue, black, and brown, and all the shades in between. Their hair is straight, curly, kinky, and most of it in between. They are tall and short, slim and fat, athletic and anaemic, and most of them in between. They are the different peoples of the world becoming more and more the "in between." They are a people creating a new bridge of mankind in between the past of narrow nationalistic chauvinism and the horizon of a new mankind--a people of the world. Their face is the face of the future.
SAUL ALINSKY
Reveille for Radicals
That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
GEORGE CARLIN
standup routine
America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.
AYN RAND
Capitalism: The Unknown Deal
America is a lady rocking on a porch in an unpainted house on an unused road.
ANNE SEXTON
"Sixth Psalm", The Complete Poems
Donald Trump marched into the political scene last year and claimed he is going to "Make America Great Again." The theme revolves around one question: who is the real American? In other words, Trump is trying to draw a clear line between his supposed rightful Americans -- who deserve proper access to the Bill of Rights -- and the unfavorable cast-offs of American society. Trump's idea of a great America is to cut off and reject those he deems unfit. It seems to be ridiculous, but just ridiculous enough to hit a sweet spot with an increasingly ridiculous voting populace.
PHOEBE KUO
"Trump's Vision of America is Founded on Exclusion", NYU News, March 8, 2016
Everything in America is big: the streets, skyscrapers, glasses of Coca-Cola, bags of popcorn, and glasses of beer. The one thing here that comes in small amounts is respect. The American does not have to respect anyone. He does what he wants, says what he wants, and moves around in the way he wants. I wonder whether it is an excessive respect for his individual freedom or a rejection of all the traditions of the Old World in the New World.
KARIMA KAMAL
"An Egyptian Girl in America", America in an Arab Mirror: Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature
America is suffering from an extended spiritual drought. While the social and moral decay of this hour may grieve us, discernment of the larger reason for this blight lies at the door of an all-but-prayerless church.
JACK HAYFORD
"America Is Suffering From a Spiritual Drought", Charisma News, March 7, 2016
Although America loved its tough guys, they weren't ready to vote for leaders who exhibited no compassion for the downtrodden and miserable, for on any given day they might constitute a majority.
DAVID BALDACCI
Split Second
The American Government calls itself a Government of the supreme people; but at a quick crisis, the time when a sovereign power is most needed, you cannot FIND the supreme people. You have got a Congress elected for one fixed period, going out perhaps by fixed instalments, which cannot be accelerated or retarded--you have a President chosen for a fixed period, and immovable during that period: all the arrangements are for STATED times. There is no ELASTIC element, everything is rigid, specified, dated. Come what may, you can quicken nothing, and can retard nothing. You have bespoken your Government in advance, and whether it suits you or not, whether it works well or works ill, whether it is what you want or not, by law you must keep it.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
We should keep steadily before our minds the fact that Americanism is a question of principle, of purpose, of idealism, of character; that it is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
speech at the unveiling of the monument to General Sheridan, Nov. 25, 1908
Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that's slightly below the average across all advanced economies.
PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, Oct. 8, 2009
America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.
OSCAR WILDE
The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde
I sometimes think that the American story is the one about the reading of the will.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Money and Class in America