AMERICA QUOTES VIII
quotations about America
What is worst about America was acted out. What is best in America doesn't export.
ROBERT STONE
New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art, 1981
This monster of a land, this mightiest of nations, this spawn of the future, turns out to be the macrocosm of microcosm me.
JOHN STEINBECK
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
America is divided by a great argument about itself. Europe is divided by a great argument about America.
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West
Individual opportunity is a powerful component of American ideology, powerful enough to elicit support for the system from all quarters, even from many exploited and unorganized workers who are at their bosses' mercy. If workers destined to be used up and discarded by employers cling nevertheless to "the American Way," it is not because they are ignorant of their destiny, but because they sense it. They feel that their only ray of hope for a satisfying life emanates from the "opportunity" the American system provides.
JEFF SCHMIDT
Disciplined Minds
The fact of our alien origins is written large upon our landscape; we have been doing our best to remake it, and have largely succeeded, and meanwhile it has been equally remaking us.
THOMAS KING WHIPPLE
Study Out the Land
Because of what America is and what America has done, a firmer courage, a higher hope, inspires the heart of all humanity.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1925
America is a great unwieldy body. Its progress must be slow. It is like a large fleet sailing under convoy. The fleetest sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a coach and six--the swiftest horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even pace.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to Abigail Adams, Jun. 11, 1775
No America without democracy, no democracy without politics, no politics without parties, no parties without compromise and moderation. So runs the string of assumptions on which hangs this exposition of the politics of American democracy.
CLINTON ROSSITER
Parties and Politics in America
Young man, there is America -- which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men, and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.
EDMUND BURKE
speech on conciliation with America, 1775
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire, I and protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens, I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
ROBINSON JEFFERS
"Shine, Perishing Republic"
America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
attributed, Reason, Justice and Common Sense: A Collection of Essays
From the very beginning, the American dream meant proving to all mankind that freedom, justice, human rights and democracy were no utopia but were rather the most realistic policy there is and the most likely to improve the fate of each and every person.
NICOLAS SARKOZY
address to joint session of Congress, Nov. 7, 2007
Violence is a part of America. I don't want to single out rap music. Let's be honest. America's the most violent country in the history of the world, that's just the way it is. We're all affected by it.
SPIKE LEE
attributed, Black Americans of Achievement: Spike Lee
The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Politics
America is civilization, progress, and technology. Those who say that technology crushes the human, are those who do not know what civilization is or have never experienced it, or do not want to be jealous of American civilization. After my stay in America, I would laugh sarcastically at those who think that civilization destroys humanity. The reality as I witnessed it in America, the country of civilization, is that civilization gives a human an increased sense of individuality, self-confidence, and his own sense of importance.
KARIMA KAMAL
"An Egyptian Girl in America", America in an Arab Mirror: Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature
The organization of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by a mass media notoriously phony.
PAUL GOODMAN
The Community of Scholars
Americans see the United States as a super-power but it is living on borrowed glory.
MORTIMER B. ZUCKERMAN
"A Nation Living on Borrowed Glory", U. S. News & World Report, March 1, 2016
We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans -- convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution.
SAUL BELLOW
"A Second Half Life", It All Adds Up
In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky -- her grand old woods -- her fertile fields -- her beautiful rivers -- her mighty lakes, and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked, my joy is soon turned to mourning. When I remember that all is cursed with the infernal actions of slaveholding, robbery and wrong -- when I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
America is the original version of modernity. We are the dubbed or subtitled version. America ducks the question of origins; it cultivates no origin or mythical authenticity; it has no past and no founding truth. Having known no primitive accumulation of time, it lives in a perpetual present.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
America