American Worldview Quotes & Sayings

Life is not simple, and people can't be boxed into being either heroes or villains. — Jessica Hagedorn

If you grow up poor you're always going to worry about money, no matter how successful or lucky you become. I'm not moaning about what actors get paid - I'm very, very lucky - but the difference between what leading actors get paid and supporting actors get is a lot. — Jason Flemyng

In order to get what we want, we must become what we want — Dana Gore

There is no greater companion like books. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The meek shall inherit the earth. They won't have the nerve to refuse it. — Jackie Vernon

It is from this absolute indifference and tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical speculations derive some of the most considerable advantages; because there is nothing to interest the imagination; because the judgment sits free and unbiased to examine the point. All proportions, every arrangement of quantity, is alike to the understanding, because the same truths result to it from all; from greater from lesser, from equality and inequality. — Edmund Burke

With the demise of the biblical religions that have provided the American people with their core values since their country's inception, we are reverting to the pagan worldview. Trees and animals are venerated, while man is simply one more animal in the ecosystem - and largely a hindrance, not an asset. — Dennis Prager

The Fool held his breath. On long nights on the hard flagstones he had dreamed of women like her. Although, if he really thought about it, not much like her; they were better endowed around the chest, their noses weren't so red and pointed, and their hair tended to flow more. But the Fool's libido was bright enough to tell the difference between the impossible and the conceivably attainable, and hurriedly cut in some filter circuits. — Terry Pratchett

This phenomenon suggests nineteenth-century German polymath Adolf Bastian's theory of Elementargedanke, literally "elementary thoughts of humankind," which so influenced physicists like Planck, Pauli, and Einstein, indeed many of those in the German school of physics, which was dominant in the early decades of the twentieth century leading up to World War II, as well as anthropologists like Franz Boas (the father of American anthropology) and physicians such as Jung. The idea of the collective unconscious (Jung's term for the nonlocal domain) was in the way he expressed it. It proposes a worldview in which all manifestations of consciousness, regardless of the complexity of their physical forms, are part of a network of life. A network in which each component both informs and influences as it is informed and influenced. It — Stephan A. Schwartz

My overall worldview has never changed: that America has and must maintain the strongest military in the world, that we must lead the international community to confront threats and challenges together, and that we must use all tools of American power to protect our citizens and our interests. — Chuck Hagel

Mold - William Henry Yale also subscribed to Roosevelt's notions of the ideal American man and of the dangers of "over-civilization," code for effeminacy. The true man, in this worldview, was a rugged individualist, physically fit as well as intellectually cultured, as equally at home leading men into battle or shooting big game on the prairie as chatting with the ladies in the salon. — Scott Anderson

They (the French) have taken genius instead of reason for their guide, adopted experiment instead of experience, and wander in the dark because they prefer lightning to light. — Gouverneur Morris

Like so many addicts, I'd thought that if I could only sort out my life, I could then sort out my drinking. It was a revelation to see that it would be simpler the other way around — Pete Townshend

Each party has a platform
a pre-fixed menu of beliefs making up its worldview. The candidate can choose one of the two platforms, but remember: no substitutions.
For example, do you support healthcare? Then you must also want a ban on assault weapons. Pro limited government? Congratulations, you are also anti-abortion.
Luckily, all human opinion falls neatly into one of the two clearly defined camps. Thus, the two-party system elegantly represents the bi-chromatic rainbow that is American political thought. — Jon Stewart

I mentioned that one of the tripartite formulas in American worldview involves time: past, present, and future. — Alan Dundes

Spend a few hours every week studying American history, human nature, and economic theory. Start with "Economics in One Lesson." Then try Keynes. Then Hayek. Then Marx. Then Hegel. Develop a worldview that you can articulate as well as defend. Test your theory with people who disagree with you. Debate. Argue. Adjust your philosophy as necessary. — Mike Rowe

Today's youth cannot escape the shadow of racism that has been passed down organically from parents and others who cling to a distorted image of American history, one informed by, and articulated from, a worldview permeated by white privilege. [sic], these biases are so hardwired that most of us have no idea how quickly and automatically they kick in and how enduring they can be. — Thomas Norman DeWolf

The American political experience can therefore be viewed as optimism in the collective. — Michael J. Fox

The whites who administered Native American subjugation claimed to be recruiting the Indians to join them in a truer, more coherent worldview - but whether it was about spirituality and the afterlife, the role of women, the nature of glaciers, the age of the world, or the theory of evolution, these white Victorians were in a world topsy-turvy with change, uncertainty and controversy. Deference was paid to Christianity and honest agricultural toil, but more than few questioned the former, and most, as the gold rushes, confidence men, and lionized millionaires proved, would gladly escape the latter. So the attempt to make Indians into Christian agriculturists was akin to those contemporary efforts whereby charities send cast-off clothing to impoverished regions: the Indians were being handed a system that was worn out ... — Rebecca Solnit

When Jean Piaget lectured in the United States, he was frequently asked whether the rate at which children attained his cognitive stages could be accelerated - in other words, whether you could train your child to be "ahead" of other children. Piaget was bewildered by the question. In his view of development, being "ahead" or "behind" anyone else was meaningless. But he got the question often enough that he came to associate it with a particular worldview: he called it "the American Question. — Nicholas Day

the way coupling is envisioned in contemporary American society is not universal, it is not timeless, and it is not human nature. Instead, the reigning American worldview may well represent one of the narrowest construals of intimacy ever imagined. Where once the tendrils of love and affection reached out to family, friends, and community, reached back to ancestors, and reached up to the heavens, now they surround and squeeze just one other person - sometimes to the point of asphyxiation. — Bella DePaulo

Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.
[Q&A with Larry McCaffery, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2] — David Foster Wallace