The American Way Quotes & Sayings

There they stood, in twos and threes and fours, in their Cub Scout uniforms and with their Cub Scout faces, totally unprepared, as is the way with American he-men, for anything that could not be settled with a club or a fist or a gun. — James Baldwin

Because of Obama ... DREAMers who are American in every way except on paper no longer live under the shadow of deportation. — Nydia Velazquez

Our men have been real Frenchmen, and their wives
I may say it
have been worthy of them. You may see all their portraits at our house in Auvergne; every one of them an "injured" beauty, but not one of them hanging her head. Not one of them had the bad taste to be jealous ... These are great traditions, and it doesn't seem to me fair that a little American bourgeoise should come in and pretend to alter them, and should hang her photograph, with her obstinate little "air penche — Henry James

The teachers unions are the clearest example of a group that has lost its way. Whenever anyone dares to offer a new idea, the unions protest the loudest. Their attitude was memorably expressed by a longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers: He said, quote, 'When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of children.' — Albert Shanker

If somebody's going to earn citizenship, with whatever other hurdles are put in the way, at the end of the road they should be able to speak English, they should be able to read English, they should have some knowledge of American history, — Rudy Giuliani

Surrogate experience and surrogate environments have become the American way of life. Distinctions are no longer made, or deemed necessary, between the real and the false; the edge usually goes to the latter, as an improved version with defects corrected - accessible and user-friendly ... — Ada Louise Huxtable

If a working class Englishman saw a bloke drive past in a Rolls-Royce, he'd say to himself "Come the social revolution and we'll take that away from you, mate". Whereas if his American counterpart saw a bloke drive past in a Cadillac he'd say "One day I'm going to own one of those". To my way of thinking the first attitude is wrong. The latter is right. — Kerry Packer

When I make an American movie it's going to come out all over the world-it doesn't happen the same way for an Italian film or a French film. — Monica Bellucci

In America, the materio-economic conditions relate to a societal, multi-group existence in a way never before know in world history. American Negro nationalism can never create its own values, find its revolutionary significance, define its political and economic goals, until Negro intellectuals take up the cudgels against the cultural imperialism practiced in all of its manifold ramifications on the Negro within American culture. But this kind of revolution would have to be predicated on the recognition that the cultural and artistic originality of the American nation is founded, historically, on the ingredients of a black aesthetic and artistic base. — Harold Cruse

When the armistice was declared American forces had fought their way to Sedan. — Kelly Miller

My parents found what I was interested in and encouraged me. They didn't put me in front of a television and buy lots of toys, the way some American parents do. — Nastassja Kinski

The American Way is so restlessly creative as to be essentially destructive; the American Way is to carry common sense itself almost to the point of madness. — Louis Kronenberger

Doing for people what they can, and ought to do for themselves, is a dangerous experiment," the great labor leader Samuel Gompers said. "In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends on their own initiative." The classic "liberal" believed individuals should be masters of their own destiny and the least government is the best government; these are precepts of freedom and self-reliance that are at the root of the American way and the American spirit. — Ronald Reagan

July 4th is Independence Day in the U.S., and it is celebrated in a truly American way by blowing things up and taking a day off from work. — Adam C. Engst

First you jump off the cliff and you build wings on the way down. RAY BRADBURY Prolific American author of science fiction and fantasy — Jack Canfield

I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a kind of free way. But most African American writers don't have that. They don't have that opportunity, they don't have that. — James McBride

Homicide through gun violence is the leading cause of death among young African American males in the United States. If people look a certain way, they have a higher tendency of dying, of having their lives taken away. — Ryan Coogler

When we talk about corruption, there's corruption on both sides of the border. That's what I think is interesting. I'm from Mexico, so when I see a Mexican portrayed in the American market on TV or films, you better do it right because you won't fool me. I'm sure no one really cares on this side of the border, if they get it right or not, but all the way from Mexico, to another 120 countries where the show goes, they will be able to tell the difference. — Demian Bichir

Inflationary trends are under way. Wage increases, through strikes or threatened strikes, are rampant. Government expenditures are ballooning ominously. Hoarding has contributed unconscionably to price-boosting. The Government should institute measures calculated to arrest inflation. America's commitments are already so mountainous, international and domestic, that the pruning knife should be applied. You and I, all American taxpayers, don't possess limitless resources-our pockets are not bottomless. Curb inflation at every turn! — B.C. Forbes

The constant desire to win is a very American kind of trouble. Less glamorous gains made along the way--learning, wisdom, growth, and confidence, dealing with failure--aren't given the same respect because they can't be given a grade. — William Zinsser

We have to attack those things which stand in the way of America progress. And what stands in the way of American progress right now is the federal government. — Tim Scott

Democracy triumphed in the cold war because it was a battle of values - between one system that gave preeminence to the state and another that gave preeminence to the individual and freedom. Not long ago, I was told about an incident that illustrated this difference: An American scholar, on his way to the airport before a flight to the Soviet Union, got into a conversation with his cab driver, a young man who said that he was still getting his education. The scholar asked, "When you finish your schooling, what do you want to be, what do you want to do?" The young man answered, "I haven't decided yet." After the scholar arrived at the airport in Moscow, his cab driver was also a young man who happened to mention he was still getting his education, and the scholar, who spoke Russian, asked, "When you finish your schooling, what do you want to be, what do you want to do?" The young man answered: "They haven't told me yet. — Ronald Reagan

American leaders clamored for this policy because, they said, the country desperately needed a way to resolve its "glut" of overproduction. This glut, however, was largely illusory. While wealthy Americans were lamenting it, huge numbers of ordinary people were living in conditions of severe deprivation. The surplus production from farms and factories could have been used to lift millions out of poverty, but this would have required a form of wealth redistribution that was repugnant to powerful Americans. Instead they looked abroad. — Stephen Kinzer

The question then was not what other countries were doing, but why. Why did these countries have this consensus around rigor? In the education superpowers, every child knew the importance of an education. These countries had experienced national failure in recent memory; they knew what an existential crisis felt like. In many U.S. schools, however, the priorities were muddled beyond recognition. Sports were central to American students' lives and school cultures in a way in which they were not in most education superpowers. Exchange students agreed almost universally on this point. Nine out of ten international students I surveyed said that U.S. kids placed a higher priority on sports, and six out of ten American exchange students agreed with them. Even in middle school, other researchers had found, American students spent double the amount of time playing sports as Koreans. — Amanda Ripley

Some labeled Jerry Falwell an American version of the Ayatollah Khomeni. People for the American Way, a group organized to counter the Moral Majority, launched a slick media campaign attaching the Nazi slur to the religious right. — Charles Colson

I started drumming around the same time I came across this part of American history. But there seemed to be a way forward playing drums. There didn't seem to be a way forward being fascinated by a piece of history. — Phil Collins

Progressive music probably wouldn't even really exist if not for the people of the United States having picked up on it and nurtured it in the way they did. It really is an American form of music in the sense that it was nurtured here. So it belongs here. It has become part of the fabric of American musical culture. — Greg Lake

The alleged music preached of the wrongs democracy had perpetrated on the people and how to protest against the causes of their pain, which would be, according to the fascist propagandists, the police, the military, the rich and the current American government. His ballads were to call for youth and the downtrodden to unite and fight against poverty, injustice and social ills - by destroying the American way of life. Radio — Louis L'Amour

Today you go into make a modern recording with all this technology. The bass plays first, then the drums come in later, then they track the trumpet and the singer comes in and they ship the tape somewhere. Well, none of the musicians have played together. You can't play jazz music that way. In order for you to play jazz, you've got to listen to them. The music forces you at all times to address what other people are thinking and for you to interact with them with empathy and to deal with the process of working things out. And that's how our music really could teach what the meaning of American democracy is. — Wynton Marsalis

When it comes to the Yellow Races overruning the world, you may laugh ... [The Chinese] have neither the foresight or endurance to overrun any white country in any way except by intermarriage. One American marine could stand off a great many yellowmen without much effort. — L. Ron Hubbard

The American people have worn out their patience being told by their so-called bettors that you don't know how to live your lives the right way. We need to arrange things for you so you can do things better than you would do yourself. — Rush Limbaugh

The longer I live, the more I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Every American youth, if he desires for any purpose to get influence over his countrymen in an honorable way, will seek to become a good public speaker. — George Frisbie Hoar

The trend in modern American culture is toward ever more individualized eating ... and with every food added to the list of things one does not eat, the shorter becomes the list of people with whom one can enjoy table fellowship ... for those of us whose health permits, partaking readily of whatever is offered can be a way of affirming that eating together is at least as important as whatever it is that is eaten. — Margaret Kim Peterson

The history of the African-American, also, is so morally outrageous as to make the fact that there has never been an official apology almost unbelievable. A strange psychological phenomenon occurs when a truth is so big, so obvious, that it becomes, in some perverse way, almost easy to resist. The history of racism in the United States is so cruel yet systemic in our society. Perhaps we fear we could not bear the feelings of guilt that would be unleashed were we to make to African-Americans a sincere and heartfelt amends. The truth is it is not our guilt that would be unleashed but our love. Making a formal apology to African-Americans is what we need to do in order to morally resurrect as a nation. — Marianne Williamson

Get government out of our way, and let freedom and the spirit of the American people shine through. — Luis Fortuno

It isn't enough anymore to take a bunch of electives in addition to your primary focus, to roam freely across the academic fields, making serendipitous connections and discoveries, the way that American higher education was designed (uniquely, among the world's systems) to allow you to do. You have to get that extra certification now, or what has it all been for? — William Deresiewicz

Commercial agriculture can survive within pluralistic American society, as we know it - if the farm is rebuilt on some of the values with which it is popularly associated: conservation, independence, self-reliance, family, and community. To sustain itself, commercial agriculture will have to reorganize its social and economic structure as well as its technological base and production methods in a way that reinforces these values. — Marty Strange

On the plane, I like to read fiction set in the location I'm going to. Fiction is in many ways more useful than a guidebook, because it gives you those little details, a sense of the way a place smells, an emotional sense of the place. So, I'll bring Graham Greene's The Quiet American if I'm going to Vietnam. It's good to feel romantic about a destination before you arrive. — Anthony Bourdain

The American people know that we cannot spend our way to prosperity. — Geoff Davis

It is my experience that the best way to deal with American politics is 50 milligrams of Zoloft 3 times a day. — Will Durst

With American Morons, Glen Hirshberg confidently shoulders his way through the generational pack to claim his rightful place on the summit. These stories are smart, challenging, ripe with feeling, expansive in every way: Horror as it should be writ, and as only the best and most expressive can write it. — Peter Straub

The figure of the enthusiast who has just discovered jogging or a new way to fix tofu can be said to stand or, more accurately, to tremble on the threshold of conversion, as the representative American — Lewis H. Lapham

General George C. Marshall's words, making "sacrifices today in order that we may enjoy security and peace tomorrow" (qtd. in Neumann 1953, 549).9 The claim was either a mistake or a lie, however, because the U.S. government did not need to go to war, not even in the world wars, to preserve its people's essential liberties and their way of life. Neither Kaiser Wilhelm's forces nor Hitler's - and certainly not Japan's - had the capacity to deprive Americans of their liberties, to "take over the country," to "destroy our way of life," or to do anything of the sort. This country has always contained persecuted minorities, and it still does, but since 1789 the only government on earth that has had the power to crush the American people's liberties across the board has been the government of the United States. U.S. participation in World War I was — Robert Higgs

Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national, and political boundaries. You don't have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science. — Sam Harris

Pray a little more, work a little harder, save, wait, be patient and, most of all, live within our means. That's the American way. It's not spending ourselves into prosperity or taxing ourselves into prosperity. — Mike Huckabee

I am firmly of the view we should keep the police out of politics in Britain, or we risk going the way of American politics, where the Whitewater investigation lasted virtually the whole of the two terms of the Clinton administration but turned up nothing. — Jonathan Powell

If a guy were dating my daughter but didn't want to spend the gas money to come pick her up or refused to buy her dinner because it cost too much, I would question whether he were really in love with her In the same way, I question whether many American churchgoers are really in love with God because they are so hesitant to do anything for Him. Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God — Francis Chan

The modern church encourages African-American women to keep others' vineyards, while neglecting their own, in two ways: by venerating Black women's performance of strength and depending upon women's labor and financial support to maintain the church, without providing equal opportunity for Black women to exercise their gifts in ministerial leadership; and by distorting Scripture in a way that encourages suffering and self-sacrifice among Black women. — Chanequa Walker-Barnes

It was just a word. It took nothing from him. It made him feel only as low as he allowed himself to feel. His own brother used it in conversation habitually. But not in the same way - filled with malice, overflowing with insult. He couldn't tear his eyes away, shook with lust for retribution. Six little letters making one huge statement. NIGGER. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

These changes occurred just as the Spanish conquest of the Caribbean islands and the Portuguese settlement of the Brazilian subcontinent was getting under way and thus opened the American market for African slaves. The decimation of the native Arawak and Carib peoples in the Caribbean islands, the first major zone of European settlement, especially encouraged the early experimentation with African slave labor. — Herbert S. Klein

I think that, you know, this is a different year than most years. We've got to tell the American people that we have to live with less. We have a $13.5 trillion debt. And the only way to do that is an honest campaign with honest people. — Ken Buck

I lived in a big bunkhouse of thirty farm workers with Leroy, who was a stranger to me in many ways because he was always talking about unions and unity. But he had a way of explaining the meanings of words in utter simplicity, like "work" which he translated into "power," and "power" into "security." I was drawn to him because I felt that he had lived in many places where the courage of men was tested with the cruelest weapons conceivable. — Carlos Bulosan

I guess my ideals died the hardest. It's often that way with the children of immigrants. We need to buy the dream so bad we sometimes can't wake up. — Sara Paretsky

Television's escapist programming naturally continues to endorse living beyond one's means as the time-tested American Way and rarely depicts families or individuals wracked by the pressures and miseries that come with excess. — Tom Shales

Since the enactment of the War Powers Act in 1973, which I supported then and support now, Congress has been reluctant to assert its authority when presidents decide to send American soldiers into harm's way. — Charles B. Rangel

If Hollywood and Bollywood were how we all lived our lives, that would surprise me. And yet it's often the way our cultures are conveyed, isn't it? People watching a Bollywood movie in some other part of Asia think everybody in India is beautiful and they have dramatic lives and happy endings. And if you were to watch American TV and our movies you'd think that we don't wear clothes and we spend all our time fighting with each other. — Hillary Clinton

American literature was enriched with Men Who Loved Allison ... Of the actual and eventual worth of this romance I cannot pretend to be an unprejudiced judge. The tale seems to me one of those many books which have profited, very dubiously indeed, by having obtained, in one way of another, the repute of being indecent. — James Branch Cabell

So it is always preferable to discuss the matter of veganism in a non-judgemental way. Remember that to most people, eating flesh or dairy and using animal products such as leather, wool, and silk, is as normal as breathing air or drinking water. A person who consumes dairy or uses animal products is not necessarily or usually what a recent and unpopular American president labelled an evil doer. — Gary L. Francione

The way to an American economic comeback, the way to help those out of work today find a paycheck, is to unleash the forces of job creation in America. The source of new jobs isn't going to be the bureaucracies of Washington, but rather the creativity, ingenuity, and hard work of the American people. — Rob Portman

What did the Revolution mean to the Native Americans, the Indians? They had been ignored by the fine words of the Declaration, had not been considered equal, certainly not in choosing those who would govern the American territories in which they lived, nor in being able to pursue happiness as they had pursued it for centuries before the white Europeans arrived. Now, with the British out of the way, the Americans could begin the inexorable process of pushing the Indians off their lands, killing them if they resisted. In short, as Francis Jennings puts it, the white Americans were fighting against British imperial control in the East, and for their own imperialism in the West. — Howard Zinn

One of my favourite kinds of movie is the American picaresque, in which the characters make their way across the country, learning about life against the gorgeous backdrops of that vast land. — Steven Pinker

Actually, Wilson's art can't fit into these neat categories. My own take is that the best way to think of Wilson is as an outsider musician, but one who actually happens to have a huge amount of talent. Much like, say, Wesley Willis, Wilson is focussed on having huge commercial success, but has little to no idea what actually counts as commercial. He's very easily swayed by people around him, so if he's told he should be doing three-minute pop songs, he does three-minute pop songs, and if he's told he should do epic suites about the American Dream, he does those. But at all times there are two things that remain true about him: he has an unerring ability as an arranger, and a directness that makes his music more communicative than any other music I've ever heard. — Andrew Hickey

Though many strive to hide their human libidinousness from themselves and each other, being a force of nature, it breaks through. Lots of uptight, proper Americans were scandalized by the way Elvis moved his hips when he sang "rock and roll." But how many realized what the phrase rock and roll meant? Cultural historian Michael Ventura, investigating the roots of African-American music, found that rock 'n' roll was a term that originated in the juke joints of the South. Long in use by the time Elvis appeared, Ventura explains the phrase "hadn't meant the name of a music, it meant 'to fuck.' 'Rock,' by itself, has pretty much meant that, in those circles, since the twenties at least." By the mid-1950s, when the phrase was becoming widely used in mainstream culture, Ventura says the disc jockeys "either didn't know what they were saying or were too sly to admit what they knew. — Christopher Ryan

People don't put as much of an emphasis in expanding their choices, so that, you know, one of the things that I learned when I was in Japan way back in the 1990's and there were all these quarrels happening between the U.S. and Japan about allowing more American products into the Japanese market. — Sheena Iyengar

The way I heard about The American Giving Awards was from the people that I work with. My publicist and I had a conversation a while back about wanting to really get involved more and more. We've been working with the National Council for Adoption with the children's home that I was adopted from called Holston Home. — Rodney Atkins

Food as a hobby used to be an elite pastime, and it has become something that is totally ordinary for people of every background. In that way, we see the growing up of the American food scene: that it's okay to be a regular person and be really into food. — Dana Goodyear

We talk about the American way, the British way. If we had any sense, we would know that there is no American way, no British way. There is only one way - the scientific way that cuts across racial lines with international boundaries. — Moses Coady

I think the MFA programs have had a real effect on the state of American fiction, but I don't think it's a question of "this is written by someone with an MFA, and this isn't." I challenge anyone to identify a book in that way. It's totally impossible. — Chad Harbach

There must be a renewal of the spirit of our forefathers, an
appreciation of the American way of life, a strengthening of muscle and sinew and the character of the nation. America needs guts as well as guns.
National character is the core of national defense. — Ezra Taft Benson

I tend to be a great optimist when it comes to the United States and the American way of life, I think precisely because I wasn't born into it. — Paullina Simons

In ways that certain of us are uncomfortable about, SNOOTs' attitudes about contemporary usage resemble religious/political conservatives' attitudes about contemporary culture. We combine a missionary zeal and a near-neural faith in our beliefs' importance with a curmudgeonly hell-in-a-handbasket despair at the way English is routinely manhandled and corrupted by supposedly educated people. The Evil is all around us: boners and clunkers and solecistic howlers and bursts of voguish linguistic methane that make any SNOOT's cheek twitch and forehead darken. A fellow SNOOT I know likes to say that listening to most people's English feels like watching somebody use a Stradivarius to pound nails: We are the Few, the Proud, the Appalled at Everyone Else. — David Foster Wallace

We are giving assurance to the American families that help is on its way. — Edward Kennedy

No way. You won't catch Notley working weekends. Calls it the American disease, working all the hours God sends you. — Richard K. Morgan

We have been told we cannot do this by a coarse of sentence: it will only grow louder and more dissident. we have been asked to pause for a reality check, we have been warned about offering this nation false hope, but in the unlikely story that is america there has never been anything false about hope.
nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change
the hopes of little girl who goes to a public school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of a little boy who learns on the streets of L.A. We will remember that there is something happening in America, that we are not as devided as our politics suggest, that we are one people, we are one nation and together we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: YES WE CAN!
yes we can to justice and equality
yes we can to oppurtunity and prosperity — Barack Obama

My family was all born in Sicily and I'm Italian-American. They're the real thing. They're authentic Italians, and honestly they're the most open-minded, nicest people in the world and nothing can really offend them. That's the way I think true Sicilians are. — Vinny Guadagnino

What we have done with the American Indian is its way as bad as what we imposed on the Negroes. We took a proud and independent race and virtually destroyed them. We have to find ways to bring them back into decent lives in this country. — Richard M. Nixon

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 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.

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

The Japanese have two words: "uchi" meaning inside and "soto" meaning outside. Uchi refers to their close friends, the people in their inner circle. Soto refers to anyone who is outside that circle. And how they relate and communicate to the two are drastically different. To the soto, they are still polite and they might be outgoing, on the surface, but they will keep them far away, until they are considered considerate and trustworthy enough to slip their way into the uchi category. Once you are uchi, the Japanese version of friendship is entire universes beyond the average American friendship! Uchi friends are for life. Uchi friends represent a sacred duty. A Japanese friend, who has become an uchi friend, is the one who will come to your aid, in your time of need, when all your western "friends" have turned their back and walked away. — Alexei Maxim Russell

We were really helped when President Ronald Reagan came in. I remember non-commissioned officers who were going to retire and they re-enlisted because they believed in President Reagan. That's the kind of President Ronald Reagan was. He helped our country win the Cold War. He put it behind us in a way no one ever believed would be possible. He was truly a great American leader. And those of us in the Armed Forces loved him, respected him, and tremendously admired him for his great leadership. — Wesley Clark

The idea of the camp was to use it as a staging area for soldiers on their way to liberate France. It was much better than putting them in Boston in case the Germans attacked. Allied soldiers from several countries left from Camp Myles Standish to go to England and then on to France. They would only stay for a week or two. One group would go out, and another group would come in. At that camp we were doing everything, all the maintenance. There was a small hospital with nurses and doctors, and we were busy. I worked in the PX. We sold coca-cola, and Narragansett beer was delivered once a month. Cigarettes were five dollars a carton. There was plenty of food. We were glad when they gave us American uniforms; that meant we were something. We had work, and we were doing something good. When Italy got out of the war, and we signed to cooperate, that felt pretty good. — Deborah L. Halliday

So much American science fiction is parochial
not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way ... — Poul Anderson

Totalizing and dangerous views of "American culture" and "nationhood" can be found in current attempts to portray "Christian values" or particular constructions of "family values" as constitutive of "American culture" and "the American way of life." Views of "American culture" that picture American society as comprised of "free individuals," and of American institutions as already fair and egalitarian, obscure the ways in which various forms of institutional discrimination impede the entry and flourishing of members of marginalized groups. — Uma Narayan

Subordination of the state to Christian values is precisely what the early Puritans, even those in the tradition of the Mayflower Pilgrims, aimed to do. The First Amendment notwithstanding, large numbers of the American public (especially churchgoing Protestant Christians) have embodied this Puritan way of thinking, viewing America as a "Christan nation." Relatively recent poll data bear out the enduring character of these Puritan convictions. According to a Pew Forum poll held just prior to the 2004 election, over one-half of the public would have reservations voting for a candidate with no religious affiliation (31 percent refusing to vote for a Muslim and 15 percent for a Catholic). — Mark Ellingsen

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 seek the spread of freedom and democracy in the way that satisfies God. [Americans] have planned and paved the ways for a long time, but it is God who is the real planner
and the proof of this is the fall of the American twin towers[ ... ]a miracle from God. — Muqtada Al Sadr

I think there's a lot of shame in American race relations. There's a lot of suppressed guilt that lashes itself out still. I see that all the time, and whereas opposed to sort of trying to address the issue in an up-front way, they're attacking and thus perpetuating the problem thinking that they're being sophisticated and post-racial, when, in fact, they're being completely regressive. — Danny Strong

Every time Bush talks about trust it makes chills run up and down my spine. The way he has trampled on the truth is a travesty of the American political system. — William J. Clinton

Every child had a pretty good shot, to get at least as far as their old man got. But something happened on the way to that place. They threw an American flag in our face. — Billy Joel

Dashi remains unfamiliar to most French and American cooks, who tend to reach for a bouillon cube to do many of the same things. But dashi is worth preparing and using the way the Japanese do: for poaching fish, as a soup base, and in simmered dishes. — Nobu Matsuhisa

I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America ... I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen. — Jerry Falwell

No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers ... Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Didn't the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children? The way, the only way to stop this evil is for the red man to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was first, and should be now, for it was never divided. We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum, trinkets, and a grave. — Tecumseh

The United States inherited a seemingly inexhaustible fortune in natural resources, yet it has responded to its environment with a dismaying mixture of materialism and inertia. The nation was virtually founded upon a ubiquitous desire for access to land and its contents. Its amazing growth during the nineteenth century was based directly upon the exploitation - immediate, unplanned, full use of soils, minerals, forests, and rivers. Equitable access to these natural bounties rather than constitutional guarantees would be the practical basis for democracy. Subsequently, political institutions were shaped in such a way that they could facilitate the disposition of the public domain. But that expectation, as later generations ruefully observed, did not materialize. The combination of economics and government had instead produced a handful of owners and policy makers who were beyond the control of the ballot box. — Elmo Richardson

Hot, isn't it?" Peter asked on the way into town, and the driver nodded. He could hear from the accent in his French that he was American, but he spoke it adequately, and the driver answered him in French, speaking slowly, so Peter could understand him. "It's been nice for a week. Did you come from America?" the driver asked with interest. People responded to Peter that way, they were drawn to him, even if they normally wouldn't have been. But the fact that he spoke French to him impressed the driver. — Danielle Steel

Coming up in the African-American culture, we were taught that we belonged to the universe and society was wrong in the way it dealt with us. We had to learn to express and affirm values not from the winning position. — Bernice Johnson Reagon

It's about panic. It's about fear. It's about instilling the American populace with terror, dread, and apprehension about the future. It's all about making you think that your way of life is "destroying the world." America is the root of all evil in the world, according to the environmentalist wackos. You, the citizens of the United States, are ruining everything. — Rush Limbaugh

Let me guess. Dark hair, brown eyes, great abs, white teeth, Abercrombie & Fitch." "Close," I say. "Light brown hair, correct on the eyes, abs, and teeth, but American Eagle Outfitters all the way." "Impressive," she says. "My turn," I say. "Thick blonde hair, big blue eyes, an adorable little white dress with a matching hat, royal blue skin, and you're about two feet tall." She laughs loudly. "You have a thing for Smurfette? — Colleen Hoover

The notion that moving toward renewable energy will kill jobs is an absurdity on its face. The notion that we have to live smaller lifestyles; not have the American way of life or give up the American Dream is just ridiculous. It is the opposite of the case; a new energy paradigm will create opportunity. — Marshall Herskovitz

I'm not an American but I have always had the outsiders' respect for the American people and the American way. — Christiane Amanpour