A America Quotes & Sayings

America has got to learn to take a joke. — Herman Cain

Packed with fascinating personal perspective and testimony, Michael Takiffs A Complicated Man wholly justifies its title. The book is far more than a kaleidoscopic oral biography of President Bill Clinton. Aspect by aspect, it guides us through the struggles of postmodern America, as the most ambitious baby boomer of his generation seeks to modernize the Democratic Party-and, as in a Greek drama, is fated to be destroyed. Veritably, an all-American saga, with a cast of thousands-favorable and unfavorable. — Nigel Hamilton

There has been among us, particularly in America, an adolescent competitiveness - a feeling that life is a race in which the victory of one must mean the defeat of the other. No one can measure how much personal unhappiness and inner cowardice have come from this immaturity of our social outlook, this childlike comparison, this absurd rivalry in every area of life. As our democracy becomes more mature, men have a chance of growing up and of realizing that every person is needed and has some contribution to make. — Joshua Loth Liebman

I can remember when
delusions of grandeur
entailed wanting to
be a rock star, movie star,
a millionaire; to make it
as a writer
now it seems that it's
to want to earn a
decent living — Phil Volatile

I'm from Minnesota! I used to work Knuckleheads at the Mall of America as a stand-up. I spent New Year's there once. I'm not trying to namedrop. — Billy Gardell

Scripture says: "Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted." I call on every American family and the family of America to observe a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, honoring the memory of the thousands of victims of these brutal attacks and comforting those who lost loved ones. We will persevere through this national tragedy and personal loss. In time, we will find healing and recovery; and, in the face of all this evil, we remain strong and united, "one Nation under God." — George W. Bush

America has a terrible educational problem in the sense that we have too many youngsters not finishing school. A third of our kids don't finish high school, 50 percent of minorities don't finish high school. — Colin Powell

One other thing this skinny Arab knew: the power of hating the Jew. He could quote from the Holy Book chapter and verse the perfidy of Jews. He could show the dagger of Israel stuck in the soul of Jerusalem where Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven. And this son of Islam's most holy places could wrap it all up in a tidy little conspiracy, the Jews in New York controlling America, the Great Satan, launching their crusades against Muslims everywhere. See, we Muslims are nursed on the mother's milk of conspiracies. And unless you have a conspiracy to explain everything in one neat package, we simply won't believe you. — Ken Ballen

I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad. — Josephine Baker

On average, it takes as much as $100 million in paid media for a brand to be a household name in America. Marketing partnerships are the best form of off-balance sheet financing one can ever find. Smart startups use this technique to scale their companies and build their brand equity. — Jay Samit

Wonderful?" wrote J.O. Young in his diary. "To stand cheering, crying, waving your hat and acting like a damn fool in general. No one who has spent all but 16 days of the this war as a Nip prisoner can really know what it means to see 'Old Sammy' buzzing around over camp. — Laura Hillenbrand

Compared to America or Europe, God isn't a big part of our lives here. I don't know anyone here who goes to church when he's had a rough divorce or is going through depression. We go out into nature instead. — Bjork

When I came to America, there was a lot of decadence in New York in the early '70s because the city was bankrupt and you could do whatever you want! — Maripol

You're saying you would sit in my pub and talk into a wireless, and they would hear it in America? — Charles Ayling

In all honesty, if somebody asked me the secret of auditioning for Americans, I don't know. Often, I do what's called self-taping for America. I go over there quite a lot to sit in a room and do stuff in front of people. You feel like a performing monkey. It's bizarre. — David Wenham

It is one of the many ironies of this period that, at a time when the intelligentsia were excoriating Mellon for tax-evasion, and contrasting the smooth-running Soviet planned economy with the breakdown in America, he was secretly exploiting the frantic necessities of the Soviet leaders to form the basis of one of America's most splendid public collections — Paul Johnson

I just want people who are qualified, I want them to believe in the Constitution of the United States of America. So yep, I don't have a problem with appointing an openly gay person. Because they're not going to try to put sharia law in our laws. — Herman Cain

It is not surprising that most Pakistanis do not support America's bombardment of Afghanistan. The Afghans are neighbours on the brink of starvation and devastated by war. America has shown itself to be untrustworthy, a superpower that uses its values as a scabbard for its sword. — Mohsin Hamid

We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived. — June Jordan

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.
Such is the logic of patriotism. — Emma Goldman

The past was a consumable, subject to the national preference for familiar products. And history, in America, is a dish best served plain. The first course could include a dollop of Italian in 1492, but not Spanish spice or French sauce or too much Indian corn. Nothing too filling or fancy ahead of the turkey and pumpkin pie, just the way Grandma used to cook it. — Tony Horwitz

Now that the book is out in the world, I'm amazed all over again at what my friend did for me in prompting me to ditch realism for a more magical approach. In some ways, the Golem and the Jinni are the ultimate immigrants. They aren't just new to New York or America; they're new to people. Like those around them, they wrestle with issues of religion versus doubt and duty versus self-determination - but as inescapable aspects of their own otherworldly natures. For seven years I've lived with their questions, arguments, and adventures, and it's been one of the greatest gifts of my life. — Helene Wecker

Passed Grogan's the Tobacconist against which newsboards leaned and told of a dreadful catastrophe in New York. In America those things were continually happening. Unfortunate people to die like that, unprepared. Still, an act of perfect contrition. — James Joyce

America had shifted from what influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a culture of character to a culture of personality, and opened up a Pandora's box of personal anxieties of which we would never recover. — Susan Cain

Cars are the most central thing in America, in a lot of ways. They've probably influenced the way we live more than anything else, and yet every really big problem - whether it's the environment or who dictates the international economy because of oil - is all tied to cars. Ultimately, cars are bad for civilization. I don't know if they'll end us. — Chuck Klosterman

TV in America created the most coherent reality distortion field that I've ever seen. Therein is the problem: People who vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch. Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob. — John Perry Barlow

To work in America or other places is more about curiosity, because I'm dealing with cultures and sensibilities that I don't really know. So I'm having to sort of investigate them, which I'm fascinated in, but it comes from a place of curiosity rather than a real need to get something out of my system. — Guy Pearce

America doesn't respect anything but money. What our people need is a few millionaires. — Madam C. J. Walker

Life in Christ is not meant to mirror life in a Greco-Roman culture. An ancient Middle Eastern culture is not our standard. We are not meant to adopt the world of Luther's Reformation or the culture of the eighteenth-century Great Awakening or even 1950s America as our standard for righteousness. The culture, past or present, isn't the point: Jesus and his Kingdom come, his will done, right now - that is the point. — Sarah Bessey

In order to lead a country or a company, you've got to get everybody on the same page and you've got to be able to have a vision of where you're going. America can't have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations - can't have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It's got to have a vision. — Jack Welch

I'm a fool, the new day rises on the world and on my foolish life: I'm a fool, I loved the blue dawns over racetracks and made a bet Ioway was sweet like its name, my heart went out to lonely sounds in the misty springtime night of wild sweet America in her powers, the wetness on the wire fence bugled me to belief, I stood on sandpiles with an open soul, I not only accept loss forever, I am made of loss - I am made of Cody, too - — Jack Kerouac

We will invest in our people, quality education, job opportunity, family, neighborhood, and yes, a thing we call America. — Dan Quayle

Hairspray is the only movie I made that's subversive, because they're doing it in every high school in America. A man's playing a woman, and two men sing a love song to each other. — John Waters

I think a lot of things will be self-correcting, even in America. After all, human societies are essentially self-organizing emergent systems. The catch is, how much disorder will we have to endure while this re-self-organizing process occurs. — James Howard Kunstler

Mr. Speaker, in 1848, Karl Marx said, a progressive income tax is needed to transfer wealth and power to the state. Thus, Marx's Communist Manifesto had as its major economic tenet a progressive income tax. Think about it, 1848 Karl Marx, Communism ... I say it is time to replace the progressive income tax with a national retail sales tax, and it is time to abolish the IRS, my colleagues. I yield back all the rules, regulations, fear, and intimidation of our current system. — James Traficant

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax us citizens for our carbon footprints. — John Coleman

Conservative ideas are alive and dynamic, the result of a free and intellectually honest vision for the country. As long as conservatism is strong, the future of a strong America is assured. — Rush Limbaugh

The standard story of cultural conflict in America has conservative Christians defending established forms of social authority, while Progressives see themselves as challenging established norms and institutions, a self-assessment that the media accept at face value. The reality is the opposite. The counter-culturalism of the Faithful gives them an independent spirit. The committed core of Christians in America increasingly lives on the peripheries of cultural and institutional power. The Engaged Progressives, in command of civic institutions, are the establishmentarians. A — R. R. Reno

Spotify - I met those guys before they launched in America and was wildly excited about the idea. 'Wow, this is all the music in the world, for a flat fee.' — Trent Reznor

America stands as a beacon of hope and the possibility of a better life - but it is also a nation where nearly 1 in 4 children live in poverty. — Chris Van Hollen

We have been told we cannot do this by a coarse of sentence: it will only grow louder and more dissident. we have been asked to pause for a reality check, we have been warned about offering this nation false hope, but in the unlikely story that is america there has never been anything false about hope.
nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change
the hopes of little girl who goes to a public school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of a little boy who learns on the streets of L.A. We will remember that there is something happening in America, that we are not as devided as our politics suggest, that we are one people, we are one nation and together we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: YES WE CAN!
yes we can to justice and equality
yes we can to oppurtunity and prosperity — Barack Obama

Haldeman is the only man in America in this generation who let his hair grow for a courtroom appearance. — Mary McGrory

When I worked as a prosecutor in Richmond, Virginia in the 1990s, that city, like so much of America, was experiencing horrific levels of violent crime. But to describe it that way obscures an important truth: for the most part, white people weren't dying; black people were dying. Most white people could drive around the problem. — James Comey

Without a doubt, it [Canada] is the land God gave to Cain. — Mordecai Richler

An alliance with France was enlisted in the war for independence from Britain, then loosened in the aftermath, as France undertook revolution and embarked on a European crusade in which the United States had no direct interest. When President Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address - delivered in the midst of the French revolutionary wars - counseled that the United States "steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world" and instead "safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies," he was issuing not so much a moral pronouncement as a canny judgment about how to exploit America's comparative advantage: the United States, a fledgling power safe behind oceans, did not have the need or the resources to embroil itself in continental controversies over the balance of power. — Henry Kissinger

We, the People of this country, have no unalienable rights ... all our rights are subject to modification ... the Constitution of the United States of America is nothing more than a piece of paper and ... our government should not be restrained by the Constitution because our government can do good things for people. — Alan Dershowitz

Right-wing propagandists like Limbaugh and Coulter are essentially entertainers, entertainers who stimulate prejudice, selfishness and meanness the way a comedian works for laughs or a tragedian plays for tears. Theirs is a new art form, exclusive to America and bewilderingly successful. In place of traditional conservative ideology, they offer their audience partisan belligerence and a complete package of mail-order hatreds, designed for the conceptually and ethically impaired. — Hal Crowther

The most important fact is that gays have been here since day one. To say otherwise is a gross denial and stupidity. We played an enormous part in the history of America. — Larry Kramer

Today, if you're an American business, you actually get a benefit for going overseas. You get to defer your taxes. So if you're looking at a competitive world, you say to yourself, "Hey, I do better overseas than I do here in America." — John F. Kerry

I prefer music but sometimes if there's on talk radio - someone might be on that I like. I listen to the old - to "Air America," down at the - liberal talk shows and things like that I find kind of nice, their criticizing the conservatives. I find that quite relaxing, entertaining, but music, a lot of music. — Robert Barry

As a kid, when I was living in America, I started using those Noxzema wipes that just felt like you removed half your face. I quite like that tingly sensation. — Jade Jagger

I'd never heard of a hall pass until I came to America. It sounds like something at school. — Nicky Whelan

Over and over these organizations tell America that family, above all, is what Christianity is about. Devotion to one's family is, indeed, a wonderful thing. Yet it is hardly something to brag about. For all except the most pathologically self-absorbed, love for one's parents, spouse, and children comes naturally. Jesus did not make it his business to affirm these ties; he didn't have to. Jews feel them, Buddhists feel them, Confucians and Zoroastrians and atheists feel them. Christianity is not about reinforcing such natural bonds and instinctive sentiments. Rather, Christianity is about challenging them and helping us to see all of humankind as our family. It seems clear that if Jesus had wanted to affirm the "traditional family" in the way that Pat Robertson claims, he would not have lived the way he did. — Bruce Bawer

Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself. — Henry A. Wallace

I was proud to be in America, not just because here I found my voice but because the country made me the woman I am today, a woman with a fierce voice, a woman without shame. I grew up hearing that I was stubborn, a troublemaker, hard headed, and not good enough. But I had been wise enough to look in the mirror. I liked what I was, and I said to myself, I am worthy, lovable, and good enough. — Soraya Mire

The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less informed part of the community. They have seen, too, that one legislative interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of the preceding. — James Madison

I am neither romantic nor a visionary, and that is my weakness and perhaps my power; at any rate it is one difference. In less romantic and visionary terms, I am a Jew, (with powers of introspection and eclecticism attendant, perhaps.) But I am alien to your natural grace, to the spirit which you would know as a participator in America. — Allen Ginsberg

It is, then, not simply a question of black power or white power, but of how meaningfully to reenfranchise human power. This, as I think Martin Luther King understood, is the real point, the real gift to America, of the struggle of the black people. In accepting the humanity of the black race, the white people will not be giving accommodation to an alien people; it will be receiving into itself half of its own experience, vital and indispensable to it, which it has so far denied at great cost. — Wendell Berry

OUT TODAY - THE NEW POCKET BOOK THAT MAY REVOLUTIONIZE AMERICA'S READING HABITS' (from a 1939 Pocket Book advertisement) — Woody Haut

This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world. Thank you. Good night, and God bless America. — George W. Bush

Race is a constant factor in American life. Yet reacting to every incident,real or imagined, is crippling, tiring, and ultimately counterproductive. — Condoleezza Rice

I think it's too easy often to find a villain out of the headlines and to then repeat that villainy again and again and again. You know, traditionally, America has always looked to scapegoat someone as the boogie man. — Edward Zwick

My father once told me that American democracy is a people's democracy at heart, and that it therefore can be as great as the American people, or as fallible. It depends on all of us. But our system is more fragile than we know. To sustain it, we must always cherish the ideals on which it was founded, remain vigilant against the dark forces that threaten it, and actively engage in the process of making it work. — George Takei

I'll fly Away took place in the 50's and 60's in America's South, and there are a couple of scenes where me and my friends are supposed to be skinny dipping with these girls. — Jeremy London

'Duck Dynasty' is a ridiculous show, and long may it wave. America and democracy will endure. They've seen a lot worse. — Henry Rollins

And basically, the sense of the 'Pledge to America' is this: Republicans understand when we were in charge, we got fired in '06. We spent too much money. We defied the trust that the people had put in us. And we know that there is a better way. — Eric Cantor

I came to America because of a tennis scholarship. I really wanted to get away because I was really frustrated about my injury so my mother said, "Go to America for four months and just open your eyes and see that there's more things than tennis." That's what happened. — Boris Kodjoe

Childhood hunger in America is as much a paradox as it is a tragedy. Why, in the wealthiest country in the world, should hunger darken the lives and dreams of 12 million children and their families? I believe that, when Americans learn the facts and understand how their involvement can make a difference, banishing childhood hunger will be a national, local and personal priority. — Martin Sheen

I love America for its bourgeois comfort. If I was as heavily in debt as they are, I wouldn't be drinking tea or coffee anywhere. I would be sipping tap water from an old bottle and serving others tea or coffee in a cafe somewhere. — Vann Chow

It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

In the Spring of 1962, a white postal worker from Baltimore, William Moore, decided to use his ten-day vacation to showcase his passion for Civil Rights. Moore planned a "Freedom Walk" from Chattanooga, Tennessee, across Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, where he would confront Governor Ross Barnett about the injustice of racial segregation. Moore, who had a history of psychiatric illness, entered Alabama wearing signs that read MISSISSIPPI OR BUST, END SEGREGATION IN AMERICA, and EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL MEN. The much-publicized march ended tragically, when Moore's body was found on a roadside near Gadsen, Alabama - he had been shot to death. — Jeffrey K. Smith

I feel fortunate I have this amazing relationship with so many people in America, because I was in their homes at a very private time of day. They probably might have still had their robe on and their slippers and haven't made the beds. — Joan Lunden

The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind. — Pope Pius XII

The latest report says the results of an investigation will be released in three or four weeks. That's a long time for fruit flies and the press. — Denis Boyles

The recent spate of magazines for "parents" (i.e., mothers) bombard the anxiety-induced mothers of America with reassurances that they can (after a $100,000 raise and a personality transplant) produce bright, motivated, focused, fun-loving, sensitive, cooperative, confident, contented kids just like the clean, obedient ones on the cover. — Susan Douglas

I really believe that when we start talking ourselves back, we'll have more to offer the world." he [Woodenkinfe] said. "I don't want a gray world."
"You mean taking back our cultures and where we come from."
"Absolutely! You want to talk about the fabric of this country, that's it."
"So rather than a melting pot, it would be a ... "
"A blanket of color, all sewn in the shape of the U.S. — Philip Caputo

It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as the Eye, always tried to escape from violence even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around twenty years old when Salvador Allende died. — Roberto Bolano

we seem to be on a constant quest to keep America a country of citizens who can only talk to one another — Kari Martindale

Most of America's leading entrepreneurs are bound to the masts of their fortunes. They are allowed to keep their wealth only as long as they invest it in others. In a real sense, they can keep only what they give away. It has been given to others in the form of investments. It is embodied in a vast web of enterprises that retains its worth only through constant work and sacrifice. Capitalism is a system that begins not with taking but with giving to others. — George Gilder

America has a new delicacy, a coarse, rank refinement. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Because my parents were American missionaries who sent me to public schools in rural Japan, I had to confront Hiroshima as a child. I was in the fourth grade - the only American in my class - when our teacher wrote the words "America" and "Atomic Bomb" in white chalk on the blackboard. All forty Japanese children turned around to stare at me. My country had done something unforgivable and I had to take responsibility for it, all by myself. I desperately wanted to dig a hole under my desk, to escape my classmates' mute disbelief and never have to face them again. — Linda Hoaglund

I was a few miles south of Louisville when I planned my journey. I spread out my map under a tree and made up my mind to go through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia to Florida, thence to Cuba, thence to some part of South America; but it will be only a hasty walk. I am thankful, however, for so much. — John Muir

I believe the main solution is to gain the trust of Europe and America and to remove their concerns over the peaceful nature of our nuclear industry and to assure them that there will never be a diversion to military use. — Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

[Martin Luther King, Jr.] concluded the learned discourse that came to be known as the 'loving your enemies' sermon this way: 'So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you,'I love you. I would rather die than hate you.'
Go ahead and reread that. That is hands down the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical thing a human being can say. And it comes from reading the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical civics lesson ever taught, when Jesus of Nazareth went to a hill in Galilee and told his disciples, 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you. — Sarah Vowell

America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. — George W. Bush

I'M HOPEFUL, because I know that while we still have race issues in America, we enjoy a much different normal than those of our parents and grandparents. I see it in my personal relationships with teammates, friends and mentors. And it's a beautiful thing. — Benjamin Watson

The poor, no less than the rich, stay tuned in to the Dream Machine in bad times as well as good ... By 1995, millions of the poor were left without housing, medical care; jobs, or educational opportunity; six million children-one of every four kids under 6 years of age in America-were officially poor. Mired in Third-World conditions of poverty while video-bombarded with First-World dreams, rarely has a population suffered a greater gap between socially cultivated appetites and socially available opportunities. — Charles Derber

You can put a public school and university in the middle of every block of every city in America - but you will never keep America from rotting morally by mere intellectual education. — Billy Graham

In America, what you've accomplished financially is a measurement, whether you like it or not. — Eli Broad

We had very good discussions on current security challenges and NATO's continued adaptation to meet them. Canada is a committed ally and a capable contributor to international security. We appreciate your quick decision to deploy forces, planes and ships to strengthen our collective defence in view of Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine, as well as your contribution to the international anti-ISIL coalition. Canada plays a major part in our decision-making and helps keep the vital bond between Europe and North America strong. — Jens Stoltenberg

In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. — Tim O'Brien

The administration Ill bring is a group of men and women who are focused on whats best for America, honest men and women, decent men and women, women who will see service to our country as a great privilege and who will not stain the house. — George W. Bush

PGA of America has been very good to me; played some of the Junior Ryder Cups, and those go down as some of the best experiences I've had on a golf course. — Jordan Spieth

It would be very hard to bring a wife to Afghanistan. In America, I'd have no problem with her doing whatever she wanted, but in Afghanistan, that's not the case. — Hyder Akbar

I just wanted to keep consistent and keep true to America and not seem contrived. I didn't want to seem contrived at all with any song choice that might be a detriment to my journey on 'The Voice.' — Will Champlin

The Russian Federation and the United States of America, the two biggest nuclear powers in the world, but apart from nuclear-wise, we have a lot in common. We have huge territories, natural resources, technologies, science, education, and of course human capital. — Sergei Lavrov

Over the course of six decades, some six million black southerners left the land of their forefathers and fanned out across the country for an uncertain existence in nearly every other corner of America. The Great Migration would become a turning point in history. It would transform urban America and recast the social and political order of every city it touched. It would force the South to search its soul and finally to lay aside a feudal caste system. It grew out of the unmet promises made after the Civil War and, through the sheer weight of it, helped push the country toward the civil rights revolutions of the 1960s. — Isabel Wilkerson

The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous and secretive economic and political force in America. — Bernie Sanders

I think we are in fact, losing free speech. We don't seem to care though. Many of us don't seem to notice. We will have to do a lot of work to bring back the American way to America. — Henry Rollins

You may have heard that America doesn't have enough scientists and is in danger of "falling behind" (whatever that means) because of it. Tell this to an academic scientist and watch her laugh. For the last thirty years, the amount of the U.S. annual budget that goes to non-defense related research has been frozen. From a purely budgetary perspective, we don't have too few scientists, we've got far too many, and we keep graduating more each year. America may say that it values science, but it sure as hell doesn't want to pay for it. Within environmental science in particular, we see the crippling effects that come from having been resource-hobbled for decades: degrading farmland, species extinction, progressive deforestation... The list goes on and on. — Hope Jahren