AMERICA QUOTES VI
quotations about America
This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do.
JACK KEROUAC
On the Road
America is a lady rocking on a porch in an unpainted house on an unused road.
ANNE SEXTON
"Sixth Psalm", The Complete Poems
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
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
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
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
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
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'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
I sometimes think that the American story is the one about the reading of the will.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Money and Class in America
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
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
That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
GEORGE CARLIN
standup routine
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
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
What Americans should by now be able to see is that neither the laissez-faire marketplace nor strong government has given them a satisfying or permanent resolution. The problem is not the marketplace and it is not government. The problem originates in the contest of clashing values between society and capitalism and, since this human society cannot surrender its deepest values, it must try to alter capitalism's. As we look deeper for the soul of capitalism, we find that, in the terms of ordinary human existence, American capitalism doesn't appear to have one.
WILLIAM GREIDER
The Soul of Capitalism
The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep.
RICHARD NIXON
Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1969
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