AMERICA QUOTES VI
quotations about America
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 does not come to those who fall asleep.
RICHARD NIXON
Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1969
America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen ... but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.
SIGMUND FREUD
attributed, Freud: The Man and His Cause
The American Dream -- that anyone can achieve success through hard work, grit and determination -- has always had a complicated relationship with the American Reality. Children born at the bottom of the income distribution are more likely than not to stay there. If you're a person of color or your parents aren't married, your odds of rising up are even worse. Policymakers on the left and right often tout education as the bridge to help poor kids make their way up the income ladder -- people with more education make more money. But striking new research from the Brookings Institution shows that simply sending more kids to college won't fix income inequality: As it turns out, a college degree is worth a lot less, earnings-wise, to poor kids than to rich ones.
CHRISTOPHER INGRAHAM
"Still think America is the land of opportunity? Look at this chart.", Washington Post, February 22, 2016
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
But now we are becoming suspicious of the very things we have long celebrated--free markets, trade, immigration, and technological change. And all this is happening when the tide is going our way. Just as the world is opening up, America is closing down.
FAREED ZAKARIA
The Post-American World: Release 2.0
That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
GEORGE CARLIN
standup routine
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
Most American cities shop to their best advantage when seen from a height or from a distance, at a point where the ugliness of the buildings dissolves into the beauty of an abstraction.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Money and Class in America
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
It is sometimes said that you Americans are devoid of sentiment; that in affairs of the heart you are like birds who come in early spring and sing while the trees are in blossom, but who leave with no sign of regret at the first touch of Autumn. I do not believe that. Your sentiment is of another kind. You are younger than we as a race, you are perhaps barbaric, but what of it? You are still in the moulding. Your spirit is superb.
SARAH BERNHARDT
"Bernhardt Triumphs in New Role", Theatre Magazine, 1920
Traveling across the United States, it's easy to see why Americans are often thought of as stupid. At the San Diego Zoo, right near the primate habitats, there's a display featuring half a dozen life-size gorillas made out of bronze. Posted nearby is a sign reading CAUTION: GORILLA STATUES MAY BE HOT. Everywhere you turn, the obvious is being stated. CANNON MAY BE LOUD. MOVING SIDEWALK IS ABOUT TO END. To people who don't run around suing one another, such signs suggest a crippling lack of intelligence.
DAVID SEDARIS
Me Talk Pretty One Day
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
I've always felt that my relationship to the United States is analogous to a marriage. I love this country. I hate it. I get angry at it. I feel close to it. I'm charmed by it. I'm repelled by it. And it's a marriage that's gone on for let's say at least 50 years of my writing life, and in the course of that, what's happened? It's gotten worse. It's not what it used to be.
NORMAN MAILER
The New York Times, Oct. 4, 2000
America: It's like Britain, only with buttons.
RINGO STARR
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Great British Humor
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
I know this about the American people: We welcome competition. We'll match our ingenuity, our energy, our experience and technology, our spirit and enterprise against anyone.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 1990
I sometimes think that the American story is the one about the reading of the will.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Money and Class in America
If you're thinking seriously about the future of America, you know that right now all bets are off. Face it: America is going down. It's full of enemy combatants ready to strike. It's a nuclear time bomb. It's the tallest buildings crumbling to dust. It's a corporate-controlled surveillance state. It's ghettos, graffiti, and the abandoned shell of industry. It's endless ugly chain stores, transient strip-mall architecture, cheaply built McMansions, and shoddy imported goods no one is proud of. It's the glamorous, Golden Age of Hollywood transformed into a raunchy, foul-mouthed, violent beast. It's the Titanic about to test her might upon an iceberg. It's a catastrophe right out of a 70s disaster film.
MICHAEL STUTZ
"America is a 70s Disaster Film Starring Donald Trump", The Daily Caller, February 16, 2016
What made America great was her ability to transform her own dream into hope for all mankind.
NICOLAS SARKOZY
address to joint session of Congress, Nov. 7, 2007