The American Quotes & Sayings

Packed with fascinating personal perspective and testimony, Michael Takiffs A Complicated Man wholly justifies its title. The book is far more than a kaleidoscopic oral biography of President Bill Clinton. Aspect by aspect, it guides us through the struggles of postmodern America, as the most ambitious baby boomer of his generation seeks to modernize the Democratic Party-and, as in a Greek drama, is fated to be destroyed. Veritably, an all-American saga, with a cast of thousands-favorable and unfavorable. — Nigel Hamilton

The growth of the American food industry will always bump up against this troublesome biological fact: Try as we might, each of us can only eat about fifteen hundred pounds of food a year. Unlike many other products - CDs, say, or shoes - there's a natural limit to how much food we each can consume without exploding. What this means for the food industry is that its natural rate of growth is somewhere around 1 percent per year - 1 percent being the annual growth rate of American population. The problem is that [the industry] won't tolerate such an anemic rate of growth. — Michael Pollan

As a performing group, the Beatles began by playing old rock favorites, for dancing, to tough audiences in Liverpool and Hamburg. When they began writing seriously, they discovered that they couldn't compose in the early American rock tradition. — Jon Landau

One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly."
~ (1919-), American writer, producer, humorist. — Andy Rooney

Play on lively, diversified sidewalks differs from virtually all other daily incidental play offered American children today: It is play not conducted in a matriarchy.
Most city architectural designers and planners are men. Curiously, they design and plan to exclude men as part of normal, daytime life wherever people live. In planning residential life, they aim at filling the presumed daily needs of impossibly vacuous housewives and preschool tots. They plan, in short, strictly for matriarchal societies. — Jane Jacobs

Suppose the elections are free and fair and those elected are racists, fascists, separatists", said the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke about Yugoslavia in 1990s. "that is the dilemma — Fareed Zakaria

When your opponent sets up a straw man, set it on fire and kick the cinders around the stage. Don't worry about losing the Strawperson- American community vote. — James Lileks

Were I to be appointed Secretary of Education, I'd issue a prospectus for a compulsory nationwide high school course called 'The American Experience in Art.' — Terry Teachout

What I fell in love with as a child was 'My Fair Lady,' 'Funny Face,' 'American in Paris,' and 'Singin' in the Rain.' Just perfect movies to me and I was dancing. I started ballet when I was three. And I fell in love with those movies and fell in love with Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron. — Dianna Agron

The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous. — Lin Yutang

We have this American president, Obama, born of an African father, who is saying we will not give you aid if you don't embrace homosexuality. We ask, was he born out of homosexuality? We need continuity in our race, and that comes from the woman, and no to homosexuality. — Robert Mugabe

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace. — Winston Churchill

My litmus test of compatibility is 'Tom Cruise.' I hate people who hate Tom Cruise, cultural automatons who at the mention of his name reflexively bridle and say the diminutive thespian and Theta level Scientoligist is 'crazy' and 'a terrible actor'. They hate him because he's easy to hate. They think that despising Tom Cruise's lack of personality and supposed lack of talent is somehow a blow against the bland American Anschluss of the rest of the planet. Tom Cruise may indeed be the Christopher Columbus of the twentieth century, sent off by the kings of Hollywood to prove the new world of International Box Office isn't flat and to find a direct route into the Asian market, but the decline of everything isn't his fault; he's just a cinematic explorer and a damn fine actor. And hating him doesn't make you seditious- it makes you complicit. — Paul Beatty

Successfully reframing the climate debate in the United States from one based on environmental values to one based on health values ... holds great promise to help American society better understand and appreciate the risks of climate change ... — George Mason

The joke was that President Bush only declared war when Starbucks was hit. You can mess with the U.N. all you want, but when you start interfering with the right to get caffeinated, someone has to pay. — Chris Kyle

A free American girl can accommodate herself to circumstances without the aid of a man. -Nellie Bly — Matthew Goodman

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

Curitiba is not a paradise. We have all the problems that most Latin American cities have. We have slums. We have the same difficulties, but the big difference is the respect given by people due to the quality of the services which are provided. — Jaime Lerner

The bedlamite little hats in which American women have tried to out-lunatic each other for the past four years prove conclusively we don't dress to please anyone. We're just docile sheep who accept what's given us. — Beatrice Fairfax

Well, Mr Obama inherited probably the biggest inventory of problems, certainly foreign policy problems, than any American president ever has. I think the entire inventory of problems that he inherited is probably as big overall as any president, certainly since Franklin Roosevelt and maybe, in some cases, worse. — Chuck Hagel

The problem is that the Iraqi people are facing atrocities from both sides - Zarqawi and also the American troops at times. The Zarqawi groups uses car bombs, the Americans use other bombs. You also know what they do in the prisons. — Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

Yes, I do agree we need health care reform; however, this bill badly misses the mark. Congress can and must do better for the American people. — John Mica

As I was growing up, you know, I'm a white Jewish American born to Holocaust parents. My father fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and my mother's family had fled the czars of Russia before that. — Eugene Jarecki

When [Imam] Samudra was tried, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, 'His lawyer, Qaidar Faisal, later delivered an official defence submission.' The defense summation praised the Taliban and its version of Islam and concluded with this telling detail: 'Mr. Faisal also quoted from American satirist Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men and other anti-western texts.' — David T. Hardy

The highways of American cities are an enduring testimony to our acceptance of ugliness — J. Rufus Fears

I received a letter just before I left office from a man. I don't know why he chose to write it, but I'm glad he did. He wrote that you can go to live in France, but you can't become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can't become a German, an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American. — Ronald Reagan

Andropov's concerns were heightened by the Reagan administration's top secret psychological warfare program, designed to spook and confuse the Kremlin. American naval exercises were staged without warning near important military bases along the Soviet coastline; SAC bombers entered Soviet airspace and then left it, testing the air defenses. The — Eric Schlosser

The New York Times, with what was threatening to become a customary lack of prescience, forecast that it would never be a serious competitor for radio because "people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn't time for it."34 — Bill Bryson

I was a star in Italy, Austrailia, Germany and Japan before the American stations ever paid attention at all. — Nancy Sinatra

The American media produce a product of very poor quality. Its information is not reliable, it has too much chrome and glitz, its doors rattle, it breaks down almost immediately, and it's sold without warranty. It's flashy, but it's basically junk. — Michael Crichton

Everything has changed in recent decades - the economy, technology, cultural attitudes, the demographics of the workforce, the role of women in society and the structure of the American family. It's about time our laws caught up. We watch 'Modern Family' on television, but we're still living by 'Leave It To Beaver' rules. — Thomas Perez

According to historian Ellen Hammer, he (Pres. Kennedy) was, 'shaken and depressed.' to realize that, 'the first Catholic ever to become a Vietnamese chief of state was dead, assassinated as a direct result of a policy authorized by the first American Catholic president.' At one point an aide tried to console him by reminding him that Diem and Nhu had been tyrants.
'No," he replied. "They were in a difficult position.' They did the best they could for their country. — Stephen Kinzer

What did I want with prestige? The British Open paid the winner $600 in American money. A man would have to be two hundred years old at that rate to retire from golf. — Sam Snead

By the end of the nineteenth century, the stereotype of the ugly American - voracious, preachy, mercenary, and bombastically chauvinist - was firmly in place in Europe. — Simon Schama

It turns out one of my ancestors fought in the Continental Army, so I was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution. — Henry Louis Gates

I think we are in fact, losing free speech. We don't seem to care though. Many of us don't seem to notice. We will have to do a lot of work to bring back the American way to America. — Henry Rollins

The real reason French women don't get fat is not genetic, but cultural, and if the French subjected themselves to the American extremes of eating and dieting, the obesity problem in France would be much worse than what has struck America. — Mireille Guiliano

Our job is to ensure that meat and poultry products are safe, wholesome, accurately labeled for the benefit of the American consumers, and to make sure that they are in compliance with all federal laws. — Mike Johanns

My father once told me that American democracy is a people's democracy at heart, and that it therefore can be as great as the American people, or as fallible. It depends on all of us. But our system is more fragile than we know. To sustain it, we must always cherish the ideals on which it was founded, remain vigilant against the dark forces that threaten it, and actively engage in the process of making it work. — George Takei

I was totally all about the American Girl dolls when I was little - I had so many. — Jennifer Damiano

No one had to order an American to save the oppressed. It's part of their nature to see others live free, even at the sacrifice of their own lives. — Richard Fox

Adeline hadn't owned a television since 1992.
She'd suffered fifteen years hearing about how the Internet would transform American culture and open new avenues of expression.
But in the end, it was only more people talking about television. — Jarett Kobek

I said, "And then, when those all-American Joes get out and some of them fucking turn into monsters? What happens then?"
Amy said, "Then we will once again err on the side of not letting people be murdered. You take the choice in front of you, and then you keep picking the non-murder choices as long as you can. — David Wong

I have the most reliable friend you can have in American politics, and that is ready money. — Phil Gramm

Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap - let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. — Abraham Lincoln

While American football is very structured and linear and static - where everyone lines up, and there's a burst, and it happens - soccer is like the cosmos. It's like constellations. It's bodies moving in space. It's a very spherical game. — Gabriel Luna

Future historians, I hope, will consider the American fast food industry a relic of the twentieth century
a set of attitudes, systems, and beliefs that emerged from postwar southern California, that embodied its limitless faith in technology, that quickly spread across the globe, flourished briefly, and then receded, once its true costs became clear and its thinking became obsolete. — Eric Schlosser

There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when we were all feeding off their gold plate; not now! At present they have not only my sympathy but my preference. They are the last representatives of our native industries. — Edith Wharton

When I grew up, all of our news, weather, and sports came from America. The people where I grew up rooted for American teams as opposed to Canadian teams. — Lori Lansens

The most striking development of the great depression of 1929 is a profound skepticism of the future of contemporary society among large sections of the American people. — C.L.R. James

In fact, because of this deep desire for peace, the ruling class leaders of this land, from 1945 on, stepped up the hysteria and propaganda to drive into American minds the false notion that danger threatened them from the East. — Paul Robeson

One hundred years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, the Spanish government issued a decree authorizing the enslavement of the American Indian as in accord with the law of God and man. — Nelson A. Miles

When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now
where are you going to put, for example, Salman Rushdie? Or any of the South American writers? Most people get by calling them magical realists. — Doris Lessing

The very same British and American families who had combined to wreck the Indian textile industry in the promotion of the opium trade [ ... ] combined to make the trade, a valuable source of revenue. In 1864 they joined forces to create causes for war and to promote the terrible War Between the States, also known as the American Civil War. — John Coleman

The American political system is not good at trading sacrifice now to prevent crises later. — Ezra Klein

The danger that American society as a whole will over-esteem intellect or assign it such a transcendent value as to displace other legitimate values is one that hardly troubles us. — Richard Hofstadter

When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet. — Karl Marlantes

With the defeat of the Reich and pending the emergence of the Asiatic, the African and, perhaps, the South American nationalisms, there will remain in the world only two Great Powers capable of confronting each other-the United States and Soviet Russia. The laws of both history and geography will compel these two Powers to a trial of strength, either military or in the fields of economics and ideology. (2nd April 1945) — Adolf Hitler

We were spending American blood and treasure to liberate the people of Afghanistan from one of the most brutal regimes on the face of the earth. That we would not use that moment to press for women's rights seems to me unthinkable. — Condoleezza Rice

Nevertheless, to the persecution and tyranny of his cruel ministry we will not tamely submit
appealing to Heaven for the justice of our cause, we determine to die or be free. — Joseph Warren

Among contemporaries, I hugely admire Alice Munro, our Chekhov, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and John Updike, American masters all. I also believe that the voice of Gordon Lish is astoundingly original and sorrowful. — Cynthia Ozick

The founding American generations did something that almost no others have ever done. They read the fine print! They taught their children to read bills, laws, court cases, legislative debates, executive decrees, and bureaucratic policies. They read them in schoolrooms and at home ... They said they would consider their children uneducated if they didn't read such things. — Oliver DeMille

There's definitely evidence that capitalism at its most ruthless rewards psychopathic behavior. When you look at the worst corners of the American health insurance industry or the sub-prime banking market, it really feels like the more psychopathically someone behaves, the more it's rewarded. — Jon Ronson

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value. — Carl Sagan

The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind. — Pope Pius XII

NAEP data show beyond question that test scores in reading and math have improved for almost every group of students over the past two decades; slowly and steadily in the case of reading, dramatically in the case of mathematics. Students know more and can do more in these two basic skills subjects now than they could twenty or forty years ago... So the next time you hear someone say that the system is "broken," that American students aren't as well educated as they used to be, that our schools are failing, tell that person the facts. — Diane Ravitch

International broadcasters are often dependent on an American home broadcasting network, so it changes the game entirely. — Bryan Fuller

...the whole of American life was organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government. — Olaf Stapledon

The generosity of the American public toward the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami has been reflected in the outpouring of support for the Pakistani earthquake victims. — Jon Porter

No, I don't work here, I'm taking pictures of messy bathrooms for a photo essay on the American West. But I'm always up for clean, so if you want to pitch in, I've got Pine Sol and a sponge in my car ... It's that VW microbus parked next to the dumpster, and you don't need a key, just pull hard. — Pansy Schneider-Horst

In a business that has exploited and ignored our people I have only found dead-ends. We need romantic comedies, gross-out and mockery comedies, horror and thrillers, teen movies and love-stories. All these and more will be a positive step towards the future of Native Americans in the world and film industry; an industry that that offers us not only the chance to play the parts of heroes, love interests and warriors, but also of villains, dorks and dangerous, brokenhearted products of circumstance. — Misty Upham

Seemingly by design, the American legal system encourages defense counsel to be as mendacious as possible. As Monroe Freedman, a legal ethicist and former dean of Hofstra Law School, has written, "The attorney is obligated to attack, if he can, the reliability or credibility of an opposing witness whom he knows to be truthful." It's an essential component of our adversarial system of justice, based on the theory that justice is best achieved not through a third-party investigation directed by an impartial judge but, instead, through vigorous disputation by the interested parties: trial by verbal combat. The — Jon Krakauer

Thomas Jefferson had rather serious concerns about the fate of the democratic experiment.28 He feared the rise of a new form of absolutism that was more ominous than the British rule overthrown in the American Revolution. He distinguished in his later years between what he called "aristocrats and democrats."29 And then he went on to say, "I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country."30 He also wrote, "I sincerely believe ... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."31 That's the kind of quote from a Founding Father you don't see too much. — Noam Chomsky

The American system of civilian control of the military recognizes that soldiers' attention must be fixed on winning battles and staying alive, and that the fog of war can sometimes obscure the rule of law. — Andrew Rosenthal

Let me put it this way: You cannot live in the world without being in pain, spiritual and physical pain. We have developed mechanisms to deal with these pains, to overcome them somehow. Therapy, religion and spirituality, relationships, material success. All this can work, but also become a problem itself.
The pursuit of happiness has even been put into the American constitution a couple centuries ago. Today we're so rich, we own much more than we need, we have liberties unknown before, even though they are endangered in the current political climate in the US - and we forget how wonderful it nevertheless is, compared to most other political and economic systems. We have a saying that goes: Give a man enough rope and he hangs himself. — David Foster Wallace

Immigrants can spread diseases for which we may have no immunity. There is also the question of crime and culture. Many immigrants come from countries with different legal structures and are not willing to behave in the way we expect American citizens to behave. — Ron Paul

I believe that there are people who think as I do, who have thought as I do, who will think as I do. There are those who will live, unconscious of me, but continuing my attitude, so to speak, as I continue, unknowingly, the similar attitude of those before me. I could write and write. All it takes is a motion of the hand in response to a brain impulse, trained from childhood to record in our own American brand of hieroglyphics the translations of external stimuli. How much of my brain is wilfully my own? How much is not a rubber stamp of what I have read and heard and lived? Sure, I make a sort of synthesis of what I come across, but that is all that differentiates me from another person? - - - That I have banged into and assimilated various things? That my environment and a chance combination of genes got me where I am? — Sylvia Plath

Surprise, surprise! I have a band! I'm really excited that we have a song on the soundtrack of 'American Reunion' for that very reason. — Thomas Ian Nicholas

For 180 years, we voted in English. That is the true American tradition, and this amendment is true to our heritage, not what has existed unnaturally for the last 20 years. — Spencer Bachus

We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life. — Jimmy Carter

A great deal of the American medical community's resources is geared to addressing the cosmetic needs of both women and men whom fear that by showing the deleterious effects of aging their marital relationship is in jeopardy. The most ethical plastic surgeons decline to perform impetuous work; the less ethical, but often the wealthiest professionals, perform all requested work irrespective of the long-term viability of the services rendered. The plastic surgeon's sales pitch is predictable: everyone can receive the face that he or she can afford. — Kilroy J. Oldster

On average the total walking of an American these days
that's walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls
adds up to 1.4 miles a week, barely 350 yards a day. That's ridiculous. — Bill Bryson

Unquestionably, American political rhetoric can be repugnant, and the Right can certainly be as guilty as the Left. — John Podhoretz

I'm still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent - you get contaminated after so long. — Gary Oldman

Robots can now milk cows. Oil prices have fallen globally, meaning both the petro-states and those indirectly propped up by them are weakened. At the same time, slower growth in China has lately shrunk its voracious appetite for African, Australian, and Latin American commodities. China accounted for more than a third of global growth in recent years, and its growth engine multiplied the growth of many of the countries that exported raw materials to Beijing. That has slowed. China's total debt has grown from roughly 150 percent of its GDP in 2007 to around 240 percent today - a massive increase in one decade that is dampening its growth and its imports and shrinking China's wallet for foreign aid and investment in African and Latin American commodity-exporting countries. In — Thomas L. Friedman

American patriotism is generally something that amuses Europeans, I suppose because children look idiotic saluting the flag and because the constitution contains so many cracks through which the lawyers may creep. — Katharine Whitehorn

The whole 'American Idol' way of looking at things is the antithesis of what I grew up with. There are a whole lot of kids wanting to be famous now, whereas if I'd even mentioned that word to one of my teachers, I would have got into a whole load of trouble. — Harry Connick Jr.

After 9/11, I told the American people I would do everything in my power to protect the country, within the law, and that's exactly how I conduct my presidency. — George W. Bush

One of the things that gives me a lot of pleasure about both the solo show and the book is that it tells people about my dad. He really was an important man. He was a kind of pioneer of regional theater. He was the first American producer to ever produce all of Shakespeare plays. — John Lithgow

Math and science fields are not the only areas where we see the United States lagging behind. Less than 1 percent of American high school students study the critical foreign languages of Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Russian, combined. — Cathy McMorris Rodgers

President Bush offers the American people an optimistic vision and a clear choice in November. The President has provided steady leadership in remarkably changing times. He knows exactly where he wants to lead this country, and he has complete confidence in the American people. — Henry Bonilla

When you ask most American parents why they want to have kids, it's to bring more joy into their lives. So, when you don't feel that all-encompassing joy, it must be that something is wrong with you. I think it's dissatisfaction that the expectation was different than the reality. — Jessica Valenti

My earliest memories of horror are 'Friday the 13th Part 2,' John Carpenter's 'The Thing,' 'Halloween,' 'An American Werewolf in London,' and 'A Nightmare On Elm Street' ... and 'Hatchet' is so obviously inspired by those films that I may as well have made it in 1984. — Adam Green

With a film, you try to keep your vision in it. I think with 'The American' and 'Control' I managed to do that. — Anton Corbijn

Even to this day it is easier than it ought to be for me to get a rise out of an American by telling him something about himself which is equally true about every human being on the face of the globe. He at once resents this as a disparagement and an assertion on my part that people in other parts of the globe are not like that, and are loftily superior to such weaknesses. — George Bernard Shaw

The full bibliography of pamphlets relating to the Anglo-American struggle published in the colonies through the year 1776 contains not a dozen or so items but over four hundred; ... — Bernard Bailyn

American exceptionalism is grounded in the founding of the United States upon an idea, rather than upon the ambitions of men. — Monica Crowley

Wasn't that what Jesus said: do what I do? He was here as an example for us to follow. Same with all prophets. Didn't the prophets tell us to be like them? That's what's wrong with Christianity. They make Jesus and the prophets into icons, take them off of earth, and put them in heaven to worship them, so they're no longer accessible. You've taken a reality and made it into a worthless idol. Christians talk about the idolatry of other religions, but when they no longer live principles and just worship the people who taught them, that's exactly what they're doing. — Daniel Suelo

The history of American democracy, to say the least, has been checkered. Our nation was founded at a time when people of African descent were held in bondage. After slavery was abolished, they were forced to endure legal discrimination for another 100 years. — Bernie Sanders

The objective of stereotypes is not to reflect or represent a reality but to function as a disguise, or mystification, of objective social relations. — Hazel V. Carby