Iconic American Quotes & Sayings

What makes the Southern Poverty Law Center particularly odious is its habit of taking legitimate conservatives and jumbling them with genuine hate groups (the Klan, Aryan Nation, skinheads, etc.), to make it appear that there's a logical relationship between say opposing affirmative action and lynching, or demands for an end to government services for illegal aliens and attacks on dark-skinned immigrants. The late novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand called this 'the broad-brush smear.' — Don Feder

A young Brit girl with no theatre experience decided to take on an iconic American role on Broadway. Maybe I should have thought that through? — Emilia Clarke

Holiness purifies our lives. — Lailah Gifty Akita

With respect to Barack Obama, let's face it; Barack Obama is an iconic figure in the African-American community. We respect that. We understand that. African-Americans are going to vote for the first black president, especially when he happens to share the liberal politics on economic issues that many in that community hold. — Artur Davis

The myth that young people should leave the nest at 18, never to return, started with iconic American Benjamin Franklin. — Annalee Newitz

Misty Copeland is making history. During American Ballet Theatre's current season at the Metropolitan Opera House, Copeland will alight on that storied Lincoln Center stage, making her New York debut as the Swan Queen in the iconic masterpiece Swan Lake - a crowning achievement for any dancer, regardless of the color of her skin. — Heather Watts

She went out with Jacob for five dates, and then they broke up. She came over that night with a tub of ice cream and a bag of Hershey's KISSES. "Comfort food?" I said.
"If I needed comfort food I'd have brought two tubs of ice cream. I'm nor upset, Luce. This is what I always eat on a Friday night. — Cath Crowley

Forty-five years after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freeing American slaves, Green Cottenham and more than a thousand other black men toiled under the lash at Slope 12. Imprisoned in what was then the most advanced city of the South, guarded by whipping bosses employed by the most iconic example of the modern corporation emerging in the gilded North, they were slaves in all but name. — Douglas A. Blackmon

I'm not sure the Russians would be happy that their iconic wooly mammoth has North American origins. — Hendrik Poinar

For a century, everyone assumed that the iconic Tiffany lamps were conceived and designed by that American master of stained glass. Not so! It was a woman! — Susan Vreeland

On June 22, 2008, at the age of 71, an American revolutionary died. He was a bona fide genius, an outspoken critich, a literary giant and an unprecedented visionary. For 50 years he entertained, challenged and amazed not only my generation, but also ones before mine and well after. He was sensational, brilliant, iconic and unique - the quintessential individual. He was my lifelong hero. His name was George Carlin. — Corey Taylor

Some said he shouldn't save Detroit. But President Obama made the tough and right call to save more than a million American jobs in an important, iconic industry. — Harry Reid

Something had lubricated us. Something had washed us clean. I understood, and at the same minute I understood that that they all understood, too. Hate had passed away, and in its place was the other word that's just as big. ("Golden Baby") — Alice Brown

Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns is an American masterpiece, a stupendous literary success that channels the social sciences as iconic biography in order to tell a vast story of a people's reinvention of itself and of a nation-the first complete history of the Great Black Migration from start to finish, north, east, west. — David Levering Lewis

The view of earth is absolutely spectacular, and the feeling of looking back and seeing your planet as a planet is just an amazing feeling. It's a totally different perspective, and it makes you appreciate, actually, how fragile our existence is. — Sally Ride

One has so many more opinions about what has gone wrong than about what is perfect. — Nick Hornby

Give, but, if possible, spare the poor man the shame of begging. — Denis Diderot

Who so pulleth out this sword from this stone and anvil is trueborn King of all Britain. — Rosemary Sutcliff

If it's not some daring, dangerous affair, it's just not interesting, or so it seems. So, here you have two people - a famous American iconic couple - who actually like each other sexually, in marriage. Imagine. — Shelley Long

Patty Griffin is iconic, and there's no other word to really describe her. She is iconic for a lot of people - not only for me but for a lot of fans. Her voice is one of a kind, and she's such an important figure in the American music scene. — Dierks Bentley

Strangely, the subsequent AIDS works that have become iconic in our culture rarely mention the movement, or the engaged community of lovers, but both formations were inseparable from the crisis itself. Now, looking back, I fear that the story of the isolated helpless homosexual was one far more palatable to the corporations who control the reward system in the arts.The more truthful story of the American mass - abandoning families, criminal governments, indifferent neighbors - is too uncomfortable and inconvenient to recall. The story of how gay people who were despised, had no rights, and carried the burden of a terrible disease came together to force the country to change against its will, is apparently too implicating to tell. Fake tales of individual heterosexuals heroically overcoming their prejudices to rescue helpless dying men with AIDS was a lot more appealing to the powers that be, but not at all true. — Sarah Schulman