America Less Fortunate Quotes & Sayings

There is something ironic in prejudice against the disabled and their families, because their plight might befall anybody. Straight men are unlikely to wake up gay one morning, and white children don't become black; but any of us could be disabled in an instant. People with disabilities make up the largest minority in America; they constitute 15 percent of the population, though only 15 percent of those were born with their disability and about a third are over sixty-five. Worldwide, some 550 million people are disabled. The disability-rights scholar Tobin Siebers has written, The cycle of life runs in actuality from disability to temporary ability back to disablity, and that only if you are among the most fortunate. — Andrew Solomon

I consider myself incredibly fortunate to be a woman working in America. It looks very different to be a working woman in other places in the world. — Ivanka Trump

I think I'm ridiculously fortunate. I consider myself a Nigerian - that's home; my sensibility is Nigerian. But I like America, and I like that I can spend time in America. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We did a reunion when TV One first launched episodes of 'Living Single'. Every time any of the gang comes through Atlanta, though, we always visit. — Kim Fields

I knew what I wanted to be, but I didn't know exactly how to get there. I thought you move to Nashville, you sing downtown, and someone discovers you, and you become a country music star. I had no idea. — Tyler Farr

The world is fortunate - for the time being, at least - that it has an American president in Obama who is prepared to take a conciliatory and concessive attitude towards America's decline and that it has a Chinese leadership which has been extremely cautious about expressing an opinion, let alone flexing its muscles. — Martin Jacques

In America, the top 1 percent led the country into war and economic devastation, leaving the less fortunate to fight for one and pay for both. — Graydon Carter

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price. — Kahlil Gibran

As a first-time director in America, I feel I've been very fortunate. — Sam Mendes

Girl, don't let your dreams be dreams. You know this living's not so hard as it seems. — Jack Johnson

I am incredibly, incredibly fortunate about the opportunities I've had. But at the same time, I've had plenty of opportunities to screw it up, too. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is 'No ... ' and not feel the need to do everything. It's about doing what rings true to me. — America Ferrera

In between the Queen and the First Lady, Nancy Reagan, sat Tony Richardson, looking very calm. Later on it emerged that this was because, having not been apprised of the placement until he was about to sit down, he had died of fright. To have expired was to be fortunate. — Clive James

America can restore its strengths as the world-respected land of opportunity by returning to open-society principles. An open society invests in people and new ideas, rewards talent and hard work, values dialogue and learns from dissent, operates to high standards with transparent information, looks for common ground, sees problems as opportunities for creative change, and encourages those who are fortunate to help others get the same chance, because service is the highest ideal. With such standards in mind, America the Beautiful can return to its admired role as America the Principled. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

I think I'm very fortunate to be born in America. And lucky to be able to have lived and had the opportunity to do what I want to do. — Ralph Lauren

You know, most of this feminism business was nothing more than white American women telling non-white women what to do and how to do it, with this patronizing if-you-become-just-like-me-you'll-be-free bullshit, — Marlon James

In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we 'battle' cancer; we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation. If we are fortunate, we 'beat' the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having 'succumbed after a long battle.' — Abraham Verghese

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

Keep not ill men company, lest you increase the number. — George Herbert

They have our soul who have our bonds - and the world was more fortunate in who had London's bonds than America is seventy years later. Britain's eclipse by its wayward son was a changing of the guard, not a razing of the palace. — Mark Steyn

In comparison, young unmarried women in America were fortunate: They had a certain measure of sexual freedom. Eighteenth-century parents allowed their daughters to spend tie with suitors unsupervised, and courting couples openly engaged in "bundling," the practice of sleeping together without undressing, in the girls' homes. (Theoretically, that is, they were sleeping together without undressing: in fact, premarital pregnancy boomed during the period of 1750 to 1780, when bundling was nearly universal.) But by the turn of the century, in a complete reversal of previous beliefs about women's sexuality, the idea took hold that only men were carnal creatures; women were thought to be passionless and therefore morally superior. — Leora Tanenbaum

The people of the United States have been fortunate in many things. One of the things in which we have been most fortunate has been that so far, due perhaps to certain basic virtues in our traditional ways of doing things, we have managed to keep the crisis of western civilization, which has devastated the rest of the world and in which we are as much involved as anybody, more or less at arm's length. — John Dos Passos

The lady who works in the grocery store at the corner of my block is called Denise, and she's one of America's great unpublished novelists. Over the years she's written forty-two romantic novels, none of which have ever reached the bookstores. I, however, have been fortunate enough to hear the plots of the last twenty-seven of these recounted in installments by the authoress herself every time I drop by the store for a jar of coffee or can of beans, and my respect for Denise's literary prowess knows no bounds. So, naturally enough, when I found myself faced with the daunting task of actually starting the book you now hold in your hands, it was Denise I turned to for advice. — Dave Gibbons

The journey to your big dream — Bruce H. Wilkinson

I craved a form of naive realism. I paid special attention, I craned my readerly neck whenever a London street I knew was mentioned, or a style of frock, a real public person, even a make of car. Then, I thought, I had a measure, I could guage the quality of the writing by its accuracy, by the extent to which it aligned with my own impressions, or improved upon them. I was fortunate that most English writing of the time was in the form of undemanding social documentary. I wasn't impressed by those writers (they were spread between South and North America) who infiltrated their own pages as part of the cast, determined to remind poor reader that all the characters and even they themselves were pure inventions and the there was a difference between fiction and life. Or, to the contrary, to insist that life was a fiction anyway. Only writers, I thought, were ever in danger of confusing the two. — Ian McEwan

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind. — Norman Mailer

Personally, I have been enriched by my experiences in Egypt and America, and feel fortunate to have been endowed with a true passion for knowledge. — Ahmed Zewail

America is a fortunate country. She grows by the follies of our European nations. — Napoleon Bonaparte

The bottom line is that in this world,you have to learn to set your own limits,because if you leave it to others,you'll only discover your own personal limit long after you're exceeded it. — Esther Verhoef