Edge Of America Quotes & Sayings

Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it - talking trade balances here - once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here - once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel - once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity - y'know what? — Neal Stephenson

Despite all the challenges facing higher education in America, from mounting student debt to grade inflation and erratic standards, our system is rightly the world's envy, and not just because our most revered universities remain on the cutting edge of research and attract talent from around the globe. We also have a plenitude and variety of settings for learning that are unrivaled. In light of that, the process of applying to college should and could be about ecstatically rummaging through those possibilities and feeling energized, even elated, by them. But for too many students, it's not, and financial constraints aren't the only reason. Failures of boldness and imagination by both students and parents bear some blame. The information is all out there. You just have to look. — Frank Bruni

Some of these Marines learned what they know on Guadalcanal, a basically useless island in the Southwest Pacific where the Empire of Nippon and the United States of America are disputing - with rifles - each other's right to build a military airbase. Early returns suggest that the Nipponese Army, during its extended tour of East Asia, has lost its edge. It would appear that raping the entire female population of Nanjing, and bayoneting helpless Filipino villagers, does not translate into actual military competence. The Nipponese Army is still trying to work out some way to kill, say, a hundred American Marines without losing, say, five hundred of its own soldiers. — Neal Stephenson

You can now buy a pack of beer containing 99 cans. A 99-can pack of beer. Who says America has lost its competitive edge? — David Letterman

Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm, which each one of us within our hearts knows "that is not me." In america, this norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure. It is with this mythical norm that the trappings of power reside within this society. Those of us who stand outside that power often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around difference, some of which we ourselves may be practicing. — Audre Lorde

The event that will light the way for immigration in North America is the talking picture. The silent film brings nothing but entertainment - a pie in the face, a fop being dragged by a bear out of a department store - all events governed by fate and timing, not language and argument. The tramp never changes the opinion of the policeman. The truncheon swings, the tramp scuttles through a corner window and disturbs the fat lady's ablutions. These comedies are nightmares. The audience emits horrified laughter as Chaplin, blindfolded, rollerskates near the edge of the unbalconied mezzanine. No one shouts to warn him. He cannot talk or listen. North America is still without language, gestures and work and bloodlines are the only currency. — Michael Ondaatje

I spent my last year of high school in Latin America, and there's a edge of salsa under all of my rhythms. — Stephen Stills

This is why America loves Stephen King so much; he keeps us on the edge of our seats until it hurts. — Caroline Kepnes

Germany is a fascinating role model. The Germans have maintained their manufacturing edge despite being a high-tax, high-regulation economy. Why? Because the government really set about ensuring that it maintained funding for technical training, technical advancements and programs. It made a concerted effort to retain high-end, complex manufacturing
the kind of BMW model, if you will. And they've done that so successfully that Germany, which has a quarter of America's population, exports more than America does. — Fareed Zakaria

I thought of America as Natalie Wood and Bob Wagner sprawled on the edge of a Hollywood swimming pool biting into the same red apple. — Bharati Mukherjee

Let us build a 21st-century rural economy of cutting-edge companies and technologies that lead us to energy and food security. Such an investment will revitalize rural America, re-establish our moral leadership on climate security and eliminate our addiction to foreign oil. — Tom Vilsack

In 2010, foreign students received more than 50 percent of all Ph.D.'s awarded in every subject in the United States. In the sciences, that figure is closer to 75 percent. Half of all Silicon Valley start-ups have one founder who is an immigrant or first-generation American. America's potential new burst of productivity, its edge in nanotechnology, biotechnology, its ability to invent the future - all rest on its immigration policies. — Fareed Zakaria

America's economic strength depends on industry's ability to improve productivity and quality and to remain on the cutting edge of technology, and that's why the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is so important. — Ronald Reagan

A solution to many of the issues in this book, and one that would go a long way toward fixing American healthcare, is relatively clear: Treasure nurses. Hire more. Nurses are perennially the number-one most trusted profession in America, according to an annual Gallup poll rating honesty and ethical standards. They are called to an exhausting commitment in which mortals must sustain an unwavering grace at the edge of life and death, almost divinely slowing heartbeats, hurrying them along, or pounding them back into existence. Nurses are exceptional. So why aren't they treated accordingly? — Alexandra Robbins

The highway from the airport into town was one of the ugliest stretches of road I'd ever seen in my life. The whole landscape was a desert of hostile black rocks, mile after mile of raw moonscape and ominous low-flying clouds. Captain Steve said we were crossing an old lava flow. Far down to the right a thin line of coconut palms marked the new Western edge of America, a lonely-looking wall of jagged black lava cliffs looking out on the white-capped Pacific. We were 2,500 miles west of The Seal Rock Inn, halfway to China, and the first thing I saw on the outskirts was a Texaco station, then a McDonald's hamburger stand. — Hunter S. Thompson

I sighed. "Actually, Mom, we argue pretty regularly."
"What?" She gaped at me. "Well, stop it!"
"Oh, and I kneed him in the groin once."
There was a split second of silence before May barked a laugh. She covered her mouth and tried to stop it, but it kept coming out in awkward, squeaky sounds. Dad's lips were pressed together, but I could tell he was on the verge of losing it himself.
Mom was paler then snow.
"America, tell me you're joking. Tell me you didn't assault the prince."
I don't know why, but the word assault pushed us all on the edge; and May, Dad, and I bent over laughing as Mom stared at us.
"Sorry, Mom," I managed.
"Oh, good lord." She suddenly seemed very excited in meeting Marlee's parents, and I didn't stop her from going. — Kiera Cass

Here we are at the edge of the world, the very edge of Western civilization, and all of us are so desperate to feel something, anything, that we keep falling into each other and f*****g our way toward the end of days. — M.I.A.

Columbus's real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer. It would be hard to name any figure in history who has achieved more lasting fame with less competence. He spent large parts of eight years bouncing around Caribbean islands and coastal South America convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset. He never worked out that Cuba is an island and never once set foot on, or even suspected the existence of, the landmass to the north that everyone thinks he discovered: the United States. — Bill Bryson

In the American way of life pleasure involves comfort, convenience, and sexual stimulation. Pleasure, so defined, has little to do with the past and views the future as no more than a repetition of a hedonistically driven present. This market morality stigmatizes others as objects for personal pleasure or bodily stimulation. The reduction of individuals to objects of pleasure is especially evident in the culture industries
television, radio, video, music. Like all Americans, African Americans are influenced greatly by the images of comfort. These images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others and thereby edge out nonmarket values
love, care, service to others
handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward of self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America. — Cornel West

I just think of Fannie Lou Hamer, because even though she didn't know my name Ms. Hamer was thinking of me. I just want to do a good job, because I want her to look over that edge of heaven and say, "That's why I did it. That's why. I knew we had the capacity and the talent to be everything America says we can't be. All we needed was an open door." — Leah D. Daughtry

Well, we are Americans. I've always believed that you work with where you are - I am a Mormon woman who was raised on the edge of the Great Salt Lake in the American West in the United States of America. But, by the same token, much of my life has been spent resisting traditional forms of democracy, resisting traditional forms of orthodoxy, be it the United States government or the Mormon Church. — Terry Tempest Williams

In Winter, [the Antarctic] is perhaps the dreariest of places. Our base, Little America, lay in a bowl of ice, near the edge of the Ross Ice Barrier. The temperature fell as low as 72 degrees below zero. One could actually hear one's breath freeze. — Richard E. Byrd

Corporate America is a 20th-century dinosaur, trembling on the edge of extinction, and the only way for you to have a genuinely secure future is for you to take control of that future. — Robert Kiyosaki

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light a candle that can guide us through the darkness to a safe and sure future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.
The problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier - a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.
It has been a long road to this crowded convention city. Now begins another long journey, taking me into your cities and towns and homes all over America.
Give me your help. Give me your hand, your voice and your vote. — John F. Kennedy

Any country that enjoys fighting and bitching as a recreation as much as America does will always be, in some way or another, walking along a knife's edge. We're a nation that spends its afternoons watching white trash throw chairs at each other on Jerry Springer, its drive time listening to the partisan rantings of this or that hysterical political demagogue, and its late-night hours composing feverish blog entries full of anonymous screeds and denunciations. All of this shit is harmless enough so long as the power comes on every morning, fresh milk makes it to the shelves, there's a dial tone, and your front yard isn't underwater. But it becomes a problem when the magic grid goes down and suddenly there's no more machinery between you and whomever you happen to get off on hating. — Matt Taibbi

Fitzgerald could sense that America was poised on the edge of a vast transformation, and wrote a novel bridging his moment and ours. The Great Gatsby made manifest precisely what Fitzgerald's contemporaries couldn't bear to see, and thus it is not only the Jazz Age novel par excellence, but also the harbinger of its decline and fall. — Sarah Churchwell

Workers on the edge of poverty are essential to America's prosperity, but their well-being is not treated as an integral part of the whole. Instead, the forgotten wage a daily struggle to keep themselves from falling over the cliff. It is time to be ashamed. — David K. Shipler

This isolation has left Americans quite unaware of the world beyong their borders. Americans speak few languages, know little about foreign cultures, and remain unconvinced that they need to rectify this. Americans rarely benchmark to global standards because they are sure that their way must be the best and most advanced. There is a growing gap between America's worldly business elite and cosmopolitan class, on the one hand and the majority of the American people on the other. Without real efforts to bridge it, this divide could destroy America's competitive edge and its political future. — Fareed Zakaria

I always had a lot of fun in America, with much more freedom than if I had tried to cook in France. I wouldn't have the same motivation or inspiration, and I wouldn't have cooked for the same kind of people in France, so it wouldn't have given me this edge I had in America. — Daniel Boulud

Elvis' disappearing body is like a flashing event horizon at the edge of the black hole that is America today. — Arthur Kroker

I like walking on the edge.. — Gemological Institute Of America

America is addicted to oil ... We must also change how we power our automobiles. We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen. We will also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips and stalks or switch grass. — George W. Bush