Russell The Americans Quotes & Sayings

We can choose not to think about our power and its meaning for ourselves or for others, but we cannot make that power disappear and we cannot prevent decisions taken in the United States from rippling out beyond our borders and shaping the world that others live in and the choices that they make. Nor can we prevent the way that others see and react to our power from shaping the world we live in and affecting the safety and security of Americans at home. — Walter Russell Mead

You have to be down here in the States to realize just how tightly controlled the corporate media is and how much they practise Soviet-style censorship through creative omission. — Jello Biafra

Though Americans talk a good deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious. In politics, the rare candidate who is serious, like Adlai Stevenson, is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn, like General Eisenhower. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging. — Russell Baker

Demosthenes, the great Athenian patriot, cried out to his countrymen when they seemed too confused and divided to stand against the tyranny of Macedonia: "In God's name, I beg of you to think." For a long while, most Athenians ridiculed Demosthenes' entreaty: Macedonia was a great way distant, and there was plenty of time. Only at the eleventh hour did the Athenians perceive the truth of his exhortations. And that eleventh hour was too late. So it may be with Americans today. If we are too indolent to think, we might as well surrender to our enemies tomorrow. — Russell Kirk

In the violent scorn of her revolted pride, of her indignant honor, had she forgotten a lowlier yet harder duty left undone?
In her contempt and dread of yielding to mere amorous weakness had she stifled and denied the cry of pity, the cry of conscience?
To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite. To forgive wrongs darker than death or night. To defy power which seems omnipotent. To love and live to hope till hope creates from it's own wreck the thing it contemplates. Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent.
This had been the higher, diviner way which she had missed, this obligation from the passion of the past which she had left unfulfilled, unaccepted.
Now the misgiving arose in her whether she had mistaken arrogance for duty; whether, cleaving so closely to honor she had forgotten the obligation of mercy. — Ouida

The six heirs to the Walmart fortune have more wealth than the poorest 30 per cent of Americans. — Russell Brand

If, in 2010, you lived in a county with a higher exposure to toxic pollution, we discovered, you are more likely to believe that Americans "worry too much" about the environment and to believe that the United States is doing "more than enough" about it. You are also more likely to describe yourself as a strong Republican. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up the proper recipe, invariably designated the lesson of history. — Russell Baker

Countries can be redeemed. Entire cultures can be brought to "salvation". The land itself can be healed ... And such miraculous change is brought about by one primary avenue: God working through the market place ... The primary means to true revival, though, takes place first in the market place. — Ed Silvoso

Accountability is essential to personal growth, as well as team growth. How can you improve if you're never wrong? If you don't admit a mistake and take responsibility for it, you're bound to make the same one again. — Pat Summitt

The topic of slavery is like an electric fence. Touch it and people will react. — Edward Ball

Potential was a red herring to plot a life of wandering curiosity. — Nicholas Dawidoff

Americans and Englishmen, when they become acquainted with the Balkans, feel an astonished contempt when they study the mutual enmities of Bulgarians and Serbs, of Hungarians and Rumanians. It is evident to them that these enmities are absurd and that the belief of each little nation in its own superiority has no objective basis. But most of them are quite unable to see that the national pride of a Great Power is essentially as unjustifiable as that of a little Balkan country. — Bertrand Russell

What the New Yorker calls home would seem like a couple of closets to most Americans, yet he manages not only to live there but also to grow trees and cockroaches right on the premises. — Russell Baker

The 'anchor baby' thing needs to be fixed ... Anchor babies are an unconstitutional declaration of citizenship to those born of non-Americans. It's wrong, and it's immoral. — Russell Pearce

They tried to substitute for Christianity a body of dogmas called "dialectical materialism." As Orestes Brownson pointed out in 1849, and as Arnold Toynbee has also written, communism was really a kind of caricature of Christianity, borrowing certain of its moral affirmations, imitating its dogmas, and even appropriating some of its phrases. This made communism all the more dangerous: for the superficial similarities between Christian morality and the pretended Soviet morality sometimes deluded Americans and people in other free states into thinking that communism had high moral aspirations. — Russell Kirk

There is not a great sense that the Americans know what they are doing, or are making much progress in Iraq. And there is satisfaction in seeing that the Iraqis are successful in resisting the United States. — Walter Russell Mead

How do you plan to keep me here during the day? An unblooded Forbearer shouldn't be so
hard to vanquish."
Vanquished by her? Amusing. "I'll send you back to the cell. You want to be my pet? I'll take
you out and put you back in your cage at my pleasure."
She blinked at him. "You don't want to send me back. Who will entertain you? I can deal poker
and make shadow animals. — Kresley Cole

Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States. — Bertrand Russell

Few expected very much of Franklin Roosevelt on Inauguration Day in 1933. Like Barack Obama seventy-six years later, he was succeeding a failed Republican president, and Americans had voted for change. What that change might be Roosevelt never clearly said, probably because he himself didn't know. — Russell Baker

Our vote for President of the United States (for those of you who are Americans) is important. We are held accountable, as we'll discuss, for the discharge of our ruling responsibilities in this life. But our vote for President is less important than our vote to receive new members for baptism into our churches. A President is term-limited and, for that matter, so is the United States (and every other nation). The reception of members into the church, however, marks out the future kings and queens of the universe. Our church membership rolls say to the people on them, and to the outside world, "These are those we believe will inherit the universe, as joint-heirs with Christ." That's a matter of priority of each, not a pullback from either. — Russell D. Moore

Americans like fat books and thin women. — Russell Baker

My criteria for doing theater has always been slightly different than my criteria with movies, in that there are a lot of reasons to do films, having to do with location, money, and first and foremost having to do with script and role and director. — Stephen Lang

We Americans look at the last 300 years of history, and we basically see a world that's getting better and better. The rule of freedom expands. The economy develops. We have risen to become the world's greatest power. — Walter Russell Mead

If I want my people to be free, Americans have to be free. — Russell Means

Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong. — Russell Baker

Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary — Karl Marx

You see the one thing I've always maintained is that I'm an American Indian. I'm not a Native American. I'm not politically correct. Everyone who's born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans. And if you notice, I put American before my ethnicity. I'm not a hyphenated African-American or Irish-American or Jewish-American or Mexican-American. — Russell Means

Terrorists hate Americans. Indians hate each other. A terrorist will blow up an airport. Indians like to work at the airport. That would be counter-productive. — Russell Peters

Before we're Americans, we're Christians. And so we have to be informed by a certain moral sense, which means that we need to speak up for moral principle and for gospel principle regardless of who that offends. — Russell D. Moore

Citizens as conceived by governments are persons who admire the status quo and are prepared to exert themselves for its preservation. Oddly enough, while all governments aim at producing men of this type to the exclusion of all other types, their heroes in the past are of exactly the sort that they aim at preventing in the present. Americans admire George Washington and Jefferson, but imprison those who share their political opinions. — Bertrand Russell

You look at the steamboat, the railroad, the car, the airplane - not all of these were invented in the Anglo-American world, but they were popularized and extended by it. They were made possible by the financial architecture, the capital intensive operations invented and developed by the Anglo-Americans. — Walter Russell Mead

The Americans love Aussies, but they're actually quite afraid of us at the same time because they think we're insane. Then they see our sports - league, union, and AFL - and that makes them even more worried. — Russell Crowe

The bungalow had more to do with how Americans live today than any other building that has gone remotely by the name of architecture in our history. — Russell Lynes

We are Americans best when we are not Americans first. — Russell D. Moore

Raining. Oh, brother, a scratch on the fender. Damn rabbi on his unicycle.
Wait a minute, where are my car keys? Could have sworn I left them in this pocket. No, just some loose change and ticket stubs from the all-black version of Elaine Stritch' s one-woman show.
Did I check my desk? Better go back inside. What's in the top drawer here? Hmm. Envelopes, my paper clips, a loaded revolver in case the tenant in 2A begins yodelling again. — Woody Allen

The name 'reservation' has a negative connotation among Native Americans - an intern camp of sorts. — John Russell

Everyone who's born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans. — Russell Means