American Male Quotes & Sayings

Almost every woman had a primary role in the "female-dominated" family structure; only a small percentage of men had a primary role in the "male-dominated" governmental and religious structures. Many mothers were, in a sense, the chair of the board of a small company - their family. Even in Japan, women are in charge of the family finances - a fact that was revealed to the average American only after the Japanese stock market crashed in 1992 and thousands of women lost billions of dollars that their husbands never knew they had invested.23 Conversely, most men were on their company's assembly line - either its physical assembly line or its psychological assembly line. — Warren Farrell

Seventy-six for an American male was a number on an actuarial chart that includes men who are obese, smokers and inheritors of deadly family genes. — Tom Brokaw

Fuck off!" Stuart says, admiring himself in the glass of the oven door. "You're just jealous you wouldn't be able to carry off something so stylish."
"Um, hottest male two thousand and twelve here, as voted by the great American public. — Samantha Towle

Much of the gay white movement seeks to be included in the american dream and is angered when they do not receive the standard white male privileges, misnamed as "american democracy". Often, white gay men are working not to change the system. This is one the reasons why the gay male movement is as white as it is. Black gay men recognize, again by the facts of survival, that being Black, they are not going to be included in the same way. — Audre Lorde

Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,
not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us
the Irish! — Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

As an African-American male born with a couple of strikes against you because of your skin color, I think it's very, very important to have some positive role models around, especially male influences. — Omari Hardwick

OVER THE PAST two generations, America has suffered a quiet catastrophe. That catastrophe is the collapse of work - for men. In the half century between 1965 and 2015, work rates for the American male spiraled relentlessly downward, and an ominous migration commenced: a "flight from work," in which ever-growing numbers of working-age men exited the labor force altogether. — Nicholas Eberstadt

There were many women in the Soviet scientific community, proportionately more so than in the United States. But they tended to occupy menial middle-level positions, and male Soviet scientists, like their American counterparts, were puzzled about a pretty woman with evident scientific competence who forcefully expressed her views. — Carl Sagan

All told, in the United States, the sex industry grosses more than the domestic revenue of the tobacco and alcohol industries put together. All told, the American male spends more money annually per capita on the sex industry than on taking his wife to the movies and buying video games for his children. All told, the American male is clearly not getting what he wants at home. — Nic Kelman

Imagine what will happen to this nation if large numbers of American women start using the Wonderbra. It will be catastrophic. The male half of the population will be nothing but mindless drooling Zombies of Lust. Granted, this is also true now, but it will be even worse. — Dave Barry

My identity in Christ is more important than my identity as an American or as a Coloradan or as a white male or as a Protestant. Church is the place where I celebrate that new identity and work it out in the midst of people who have many differences but share this one thing in common. We are charged to live out a kind of alternative society before the eyes of the watching world, a world that is increasingly moving toward tribalism and division. — Philip Yancey

A deep and enduring economic crisis like the Great Depression of the 1930s, or a natural disaster that kills tens of thousands of people, might change America's fundamental calculus about economic justice. Until then, the American public will probably continue to refrain from broadly challenging both male and female corporate leaders who compensate themselves far in excess of their value to society. That — Sebastian Junger

Final Fantasy VII awoke American gaming to the possibilities of narrative dynamism and the importance of relatively developed characters - no small inspiration to take from a series whose beautifully androgynous male characters often appear to be some kind of heterosexual stress test. — Tom Bissell

I'm far from immune to the American, perhaps historically male, prejudice toward practical and physical competence; I hope I've also considered that prejudice enough to have some distance from it. — Robert Pinsky

To accuse the American male of not bathing in Paris is merely to flatter him. — Elaine Dundy

Being kind modified the extraordinary, alarming otherness of him, which was threefold - large, male and American. — Kate Atkinson

At 200 pounds, with a 17-inch neck, a resting pulse of 78, a bench press of 200 pounds, I was very much indeed a normal, All-American male. I carried my sickness within. — Dirk Benedict

This peaceful sleep of being born male and rich and white and American and at this prosperous time, when the wars that were happening were far from home. This boy, told from the first moment he was born that he could do what he wanted. All he needed was to try. Mess up over and over, and everyone would wait until he got it right. — Lauren Groff

I believe that it is my job to fight for the rights of others to have the same rights that I take for granted. As a white, American male, I have had it quite good. I recognize that and fight every day for everyone to have the same opportunities that I have had. — Michael Skolnik

For most of the history of the American empire, government has been a tool for preserving and furthering the power and might of white male corporate elites ... — Cornel West

In 1970, American women were paid 59 cents for every dollar their male counterparts made. By 2010, women had protested, fought, and worked their butts off to raise that compensation to 77 cents for every dollar men made.10 As activist Marlo Thomas wryly joked on Equal Pay Day 2011, "Forty years and eighteen cents. A dozen eggs have gone up ten times that amount."11 — Sheryl Sandberg

American feminism is currently dominated by a group of wome n wh o seek to persuad e the public that American wome n are not the free creatures we thin k w e are. Th e leaders an d theorists of the women's movemen t believe that ou r society is best described as a patriarchy, a "male hegemony," a "sex/gender system" in whic h the dominan t gender works to keep wome n cowering an d submissive. The feminists wh o hold this divisive view of ou r social an d political reality believe we are in a gender war, an d they are eager to disseminate stories of atrocity that are designed to alert wome n to their plight. Th e "gender feminists" (as I shall call them) believe that all ou r institutions, from the state to the family to the grade schools, perpetuate male dominance . Believing that wome n are virtually under siege, gende r feminists naturally seek recruits to their side of the gender war. They seek support . They seek vindication. They seek ammunition. — Christina Hoff Sommers

The American work environment has to change, not the women. We should be recognizing that what women are not fitting into is a very narrow, male-dominated workplace of the 1950s. — Anne-Marie Slaughter

I was not very well-behaved. I remember I was a discipline problem. I was a typical American male at twenty years old, and I was causing trouble whenever I could. — Peter DeLuise

It's really important to have life strategies and part of that is sort of knowing where you want to go so you can have a map that helps you to get there. And the traditional way tells us oh we get into school and someone else advises us, helps us, but that often does not work for African Americans female and male. Because what works for the dominant culture often does not work for us. — Bell Hooks

For starters, Portland isn't a great city to live in if you're a young, African American male with a lot of money, — Greg Oden

Americans who do not see themselves as victims - of an 'unfair' or 'racist' or 'misogynist' society - are more likely to vote Republican. On the other hand, Americans who see themselves as victims of American society are likely to vote Democrat. Therefore, the Democratic Party and its supportive media cultivate victimhood among almost all Americans who are not white and male. — Dennis Prager

The American male is a quivering mass of insecurities. If a woman makes the mistake of loving him, he will make her suffer terribly for her utter lack of taste. — Pat Conroy

Living in a cultural milieu where the foreign writers most widely available and admired were Russian, I came very late to postwar American writers, and I had great trouble with the canonically exalted white male writers I tried first. — Pankaj Mishra

The real Jack Johnson was both more and less than those who loved or those who hated him ever knew. He embodied American individualism in its purest form; nothing - no law or custom, no person white or black, male or female - could keep him for long from whatever he wanted. — Geoffrey Ward

American culture enforces such rigid gender roles for male friendships that they are gay unless they materially resemble a beer commercial. — Thomm Quackenbush

I can hear people in American society saying, "Oh, you just like that subservient kind of woman in Asia who waits on her man hand and foot." Nothing could be more of a misconception. Many Asian women I've met, surely the most interesting ones. . . have strengths of character that most of us in America - male or female-simply lack. — Richard Terrill

Adorable in her not-very-bright submissiveness, charming in her childlike delight in shiny floors, even forgivable in her spiteful competition for the whitest, brightest wash, Madison Avenue's girl-next door is all the American male could wish for: unless, by some miscarriage, he should fancy human companionship. — Vivian Gornick

You leave your neighborhood but you never want to forget where you came from," he says. "I have the best of best worlds. I'm street smart and book smart. You put that together in an African-American male and that's dangerous. — Anonymous

I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music. They just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male. — Kurt Cobain

My generation of writers has been prone to premature illness and death, especially the women. When Black male writers meet it's like a session of the American Diabetic Association. — Ishmael Reed

A lot of great art comes from the Afro-American male experience. Black men are geniuses, and many times their desperation, their position as being pariahs, leads them to great originality. — Ishmael Reed

He's like the most dangerous species of American there is: heterosexual white male who didn't get what he wanted. — Nathan Hill

The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities. — Wilfrid Sheed

I thought Sundays were supposed to be relaxing. As a male citizen of America, I'm entitled on Sundays to watch athletic men in tight uniforms ritualistically invade one another's territory, and while they're resting I get to be bombarded with commercials about trucks, pizza, beer, and financial services. That's how it's supposed to be; that's the American dream. — Kevin Hearne

Maybe just as many women writers as male writers could be billed as the next great American writer by their publisher. Maybe book criticism sections could review an equal amount of female and male writers. Maybe Oprah could start putting some books by women authors in her book club, since most of her audience is women. — Jami Attenberg

It is a point of pride for the American male to keep the same size Jockey shorts for his entire life. — Bill Cosby

I had what I would consider a normal upbringing and, which to me, a normal American up - upbringing for an American male child almost gears you towards going into the military. — Peter P. Mahoney

[Writing in the voice of female characters] is scary. You get more cautious as you get older. I probably wouldn't write as an American either. I'd find a reason to make them half British.
I'm aware that female writers have been writing brilliant female characters for hundreds of years. I could make a terrible fool of myself unless I work out what the traps are, find bad female characters by male writers, work out why they're bad and give my wife every single book to read. — David Mitchell

The male image has been so pulled down by situation comedy in the last 15 years, it is frightening. I don't like what has happened to the American male. — Bill Bixby

I really wanted to be born a woman. It all started there. A South American woman. And I'm upset that I was born a white Jewish male. I've been angry since. — Fisher Stevens

Indeed, so far from being humorous, the male American is the most abnormally serious creature who ever existed.. It is only fair to admit that he can exaggerate, but even his exaggeration has a rational basis. It is not founded on wit or fancy; it does not spring from any poetic imagination. — Oscar Wilde

There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master the victory cry of the great ape as it issued from the androgynous chest of Johnny Weissmuller, to the accompaniment of thousands of arms and legs snapping during attempts to swing from tree to tree in the backyards of the Republic. — Gore Vidal

There is one unmistakable lesson in American history: A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

She had never in her life met such an innocent. In nearly everyone who had ever lived there was at least one small splinter of evil. There was none in him: she knew it when she saw him up on that windowsill the night before, the lightning shocking the world behind him. His eagerness, his deep kindness, these were the benefits of his privilege. This peaceful sleep of being born male and rich and white and American and at this prosperous time, when the wars that were happening were far from home. This boy, told from the first moment he was born that he could do what he wanted. All he needed was to try. Mess up over and over, and everyone would wait until he got it right. She — Lauren Groff

Write what you know," my ass. Now, I'm not suggesting that you write about my ass. But although you do not, in fact, know my ass, I give you permission to write about it. And if you think you need my permission to write about my ass ("What right do I have, as a male, twenty-something, single, childfree, immigrant Indonesian Buddhist, to pretend to understand the ass of an Anglo American middle-aged married female Freethinker?") or about anything, then you lack the courage, curiosity and imagination to write good fiction, so please find something else to do. — Robyn Parnell

When I was really young, the women's national team wasn't on a grand media stage, so my role models were male basketball and male American football players. — Abby Wambach

I think I was born at a time when an American male had so many advantages and opportunities that weren't available to men before or after, just a very brief period. — John Malkovich

Chris Hedges said that Michael Jackson's memorial service was a variety show with a coffin, that MJ transformed himself through surgery and perhaps female hormones from a brown-skinned African American male to a chalk-faced androgynous ghoul with no clear sexual identity. — Chris Hedges

In fashion, there's a lack of strong male images. And there's a huge lack of strong African American images. I noticed over the past thirteen years, Ralph and those guys have used guys that looked similar to me. And I was happy for those guys, but eventually I said, 'Enough is enough, I'm just going to go in and take my job back.' — Tyson Beckford

Since President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, the gap between men and women's earnings has narrowed by less than a half-cent per year. At this rate, American women will have to wait until 2062 to bring home the same salary as their male counterparts. — Jackie Speier

Ode to Douglas Adams

In the solar system we inhabit, we live on a small planet we all call Earth. Okay, when I say small, I mean it's small compared to say, oh, Jupiter. Earth is something like a dime compared to Jupiter's beach ball. On this Earth is a fairly large country we all call The United States of America. Of course, when I say fairly large, it's like the U.S. is a piece of broccoli next to China's really large cauliflower. Now that I think of it, that may not be a good comparison as it depends on the restaurant you go to. At the place I was at last night it would be a good comparison as the cauliflower was larger than the broccoli. Not that I'd touch either. I had a hamburger with fries and somebody at the next table had those ghastly vegetables.

From the Preface to "Sex and the American Male." I was saddened by the passing of Douglas Adams and wrote the preface to sound a little like his "Hitchhiker's..." books and to honor him. I hope he's smiling. — Jay Williams

I only became an actor to get your attention, to challenge the archetype of an African American male; I can't be anything else in this lifetime than an African American man. — Isaiah Washington

I definitely feel closer to the feminine side of the human being than I do the male - or the American idea of what a male is supposed to be. Just watch a beer commercial and you'll see what I mean. — Kurt Cobain

As a first-generation Ethiopian immigrant, Sheba had lived in Charleston since she turned five years of age. She was Ethiopian by birth, but American by preference. She had worked hard, studied and sacrificed plenty to get where she was today, no easy feat for someone who had just celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday. According to her friends, Sheba was a beauty, though when she looked in the mirror, she saw inevitable flaws; her cheekbones were too pronounced, her mouth a little too wide, her nose with that perturbing slant to it. Still, she accepted compliments gratefully, especially from her roommate, Janelle. Janelle was the true beauty, Sheba thought, with dark ebony skin so smooth that she could be a walking ad for Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate. — Joanna Hynes

The most important domestic challenge facing the U.S. at the close of the twentieth century is the re-creation of fatherhood as avital social role for men. At stake is nothing less than the success of the American experiment. For unless we reverse the trend of fatherlessness, no other set of accomplishments
not economic growth or prison construction or welfare reform or better schools
will succeed in arresting the decline of child well-being and the spread of male violence. To tolerate the trend of fatherlessness is to accept the inevitability of continued social recession. — David Blankenhorn

She saw it over and over again in her male patients, she said - it could probably qualify as an epidemic among American men: this stubborn reluctance to embrace our wholeness - this stoic denial that we had come from our mothers as well as our fathers. It was sad, really - tragic. So wasteful of human lives, as our wars and drive-by shootings kept proving to us; all one had to do was turn on CNN or CBS News. And yet, it was comic, too - the lengths most men went to to prove that they were tough guys. — Wally Lamb

In the early years of the Roaring Twenties, American women not only won the right to vote but they also earned headlines along side their male counterparts during the Golden Age of American sports. Michael Bohn shares an engaging story of how two sports heroines, tennis player Helen Wills and swimmer Gertrude Ederle, helped embolden women to seek self-fulfillment by challenging the status quo. — Donna De Varona

As an African-American, as a woman, I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down, never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important. — Rita Dove

Sure, I did a lot of things in excess. But if you look at the core, the foundation of what I pursued, what red-blooded young American male in my position wouldn't? — Charlie Sheen

My brother often complains to me about the 'angry Asian male' in the United States. As a female, I haven't encountered this, but Asian-American men are angry. They're angry because, for so many years, they've been neglected as sex symbols. Asian women have it much easier, I think; we're accepted into various circles. — Tess Gerritsen

they were all just as ignorant as Blackstone was of the chancery law system that had long tempered the inequities of Blackstone's beloved Common Law in both England and the American colonies. Under the old doctrine of the femme covert, which Blackstone almost single-handedly revived, married women legally died; they lost their property rights, their rights to contract and sue, and even the right to custody of their own children and possession of their own bodies. At the same time, the states, one by one, acted to correct an "oversight" in their constitutions; in 1798 New York inserted the word male in the section dealing with suffrage. — Ann Jones

I am a white guy in America with an education, albeit high school, but a pretty good one. Another guy from a different demographic or different ethnicity in America can look at me and say, "You take a lot for granted." Well ... okay. I just live in a white male American reality, where I hear you but I don't know if I necessarily read you. — Henry Rollins

If you currently travel abroad or plan to in the future, make sure you understand the cultural convention of the country that you are visiting. Particularly with regard to greetings. If someone gives you a weak hand-shake, don't grimace. If anyone takes your arm, don't wince. If you are in the Middle East and a person wants to hold your hand, hold it. If you are a man visiting Russia, don't be surprised when your male host kisses your cheek, rather than hand. All of these greetings are as natural as way to express genuine sentiments as an American handshake. I am honored when an Arab or Asian man offers to take my hand because I know that it is a sign of high respect and trust. Accepting these cultural differences is the first step to better understanding and embracing diversity. — Joe Navarro

The project of Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man' is exactly that: to assert the beautiful, bountiful, chaotic complexity of one black American male. And, by extension, all black American males. — Victor LaValle

I am happy to be a regional writer. My region is the American West, old Mexico, West Virginia, New York, Europe, Australia, the human heart, and the male groin. — Edward Abbey

This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African American President. — Mark Shields

Being "up to something" was the unnamable and unforgiveable crime for which any American male could be indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced in one breath. He wondered how things had gotten rigged so that the male half of the race must always behave to suit feminine rules and feminine logic, like a snotty-nosed school boy in front of a stern teacher. — Robert A. Heinlein

The phone rang, picked up, and the same male voice announced, "Chris Powers."
"Hey there, Chris. Are you aware it's a felony to make threats over the phone?"
To give Powers his fair due, he got over his shock within a split second. "Try it, asshole. I dare you. My lawyers will have you for lunch." He clicked off again.
I did what any red-blooded American male would do. I called my big, ex-cop ex-boyfriend. — Josh Lanyon

The advertising media in this country continuously informs the American male of his need for indispensable signs of his virility ... — Frances M. Beal

I'm an American male, Lowenstein," I said, smiling. "It's not my job to be open." "What exactly is the American male's job?" she asked. "To be maddening. To be unreadable, controlling, bull-headed, and insensitive," I said. — Pat Conroy

We [Americans] have a historical trauma when it comes to the past relationships when it comes to Native Americans and the history of how America was created. With this film, it's nice to see that the trauma is presented from a white male that was in the Civil War and that trauma affects him in a way that still exists. — Adam Beach

Okay. I'm not a white male. At least, not predominantly so. And as I mentioned before, I'm in an environment right now where race is really important. See, Chinese men are not that physically intimidating. We're not that tall. We're not that built. We have exactly one thing going for us in a fight - that our opponent recognizes that there's a possibility, no matter how remote, that we might know kung-fu. — Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

The 'New York Honk,' as it was called, was the most fashionable accent an American male could have at that time, namely, the spring of 1963. One achieved it by forcing all words out through the nostrils rather than the mouth. It was at once virile ... and utterly affected. Nelson Rockefeller had a New York Honk. — Tom Wolfe

It is dangerous to be an American Negro male. America has never wanted its Negroes to be men, and does not, generally, treat them as men. It treats them as mascots, pets, or things. — James Baldwin