Un American Quotes & Sayings

Americans are free to choose everything from what they eat, drive and watch on TV to the President of the United States. Yet, when it comes to allowing Americans to choose the health insurance that works best for them and their family, the freedom to choose suddenly becomes un-American. — Ron Wyden

When you have to manage the world, please everyone, earn more than you did last year, and work off five pounds, you will be driven. If not, you run the risk of being un-American or even un-Christian because our economy and churches rely on such people. Even when paralyzed by circumstances, a stressed person is a driven person. — Edward T. Welch

Major international interventions are doomed unless the US is directly or indirectly involved. But if American politicians, officials and servicemen are to be put at risk of arrest and prosecution, the United States will be most reluctant to act in order to curb aggression or prevent genocide. So the effect of the court may well be to diminish, not increase, the numbers of (in the words of the UN Secretary General) 'innocents of distant wars and conflicts'. — Margaret Thatcher

Indeed, everything that is currently being said about America's diverse Muslim population - that they are foreign and exotic and un-American - was said about Catholic and Jewish immigrants nearly a century ago. — Reza Aslan

It is hardly a coincidence that the cadences of Chambers's HUAC testimony should anticipate the prose of Witness. The House Committee on Un-American Activities had given him his true voice ... — Sam Tanenhaus

Sometimes I look at where we've come to, and how much technology and advancement there is, and I can't believe that we're not this perfectly balanced, beautiful, peaceful society. I'm shocked that we're so deeply polarized, that there are people who want progress and they feel guilty for wanting progress, because it somehow seems un-American, because being American means staying ignorant and going backward. — Rashida Jones

It's all very Italian (and decidedly un-American): to insist that doing the right thing is the most pleasurable thing, and that the act of consumption might be an act of addition rather than subtraction. — Michael Pollan

The charges are false and despicable. I have not received a fair hearing. This is un-American. All the lawyering will provoke an untoward outcome. — Catherine Crier

Our cause in the war on terror isn't helped when we have army officers like Lieutenant General William Boykin speaking in evangelical churches and claiming this as some sort of battle for the Christian religion. That's wrong. That's un-American. — John F. Kerry

The soldier does not wish to appear a coward, disloyal, or un-American. The situation has been so defined that he can see himself as patriotic, courageous, and manly only through compliance. — Stanley Milgram

Thomas Lull knows he is un-American: he hates cars but loves trains, Indian trains, big trains like a nation on the move. He is content with the contradiction that they are at once hierarchical and democratic, a temporary community brought together for a time; vital while it lasts, burning away like early mist when the terminus is reached. — Ian McDonald

When I watched the Twin Towers fall, I said aloud to my naked friend, "There go our civil liberties." A few months later I called George Carlin and we were chatting about America's reaction to the attack. I told him my thoughts. He excused himself, put down the phone, and went and got his journal. As the Twin Towers fell, he had written, "There go our civil rights." I was so proud to have had a similar thought at a similar time to a genius. We were sad to be right. To react to an attack on our freedom with less freedom seems so deeply un-American. What ever happened to Yankee Doodle Dandy and "fuck you in the fucking neck"? — Penn Jillette

Leaving American disaster victims to languish is morally reprehensible and un-American. — Cedric Richmond

Of course, there are also faculty who are discouraged from speaking critically about social issues because of the increasing assumption in American society that any form of critique which calls official power into question is somehow un-American. This absurd attempt to define any critique of official power as unpatriotic has a chilling effect on faculty, especially when such views and the names of the people to whom they are ascribed are widely disseminated in right-wing and dominant media outlets. — Henry Giroux

Nature is very un-American. Nature never hurries. — William George Jordan

That un-American institution, the trades union, has developed its un-American principle of curtailing or abolishing the personal freedom of the individual in a new direction, that of seeking, as far as possible, to cripple the World's Fair. — Erik Larson

Most of us have complicated backstories, messy histories, multiple narratives. It was a high-wire strategy, for Obama, this invocation of our collective human messiness. His enemies latched on to its imprecision, emphasizing the exotic, un-American nature of Dream City, this ill-defined place where you could be from Hawaii and Kenya, Kansas and Indonesia all at the same time, where you could jive talk like a street hustler and orate like a senator. — Zadie Smith

Being fat is the absolute nadir of the misfit. You're a misfit because nothing fits. You don't fit in. You're not fit. You're fat. Fat doesn't have the poetic cachet of alcohol, the whiff of danger in the drug of choice. You're just fat. Being fat is so un-American, so unattractive, unerotic, unfashionable, undisciplined, unthinkable, uncool. It makes you invisible. It makes you conspicuous. — Claudia Shear

The Iraq War. No one took to the streets over it. It certainly would have been appropriate. If anybody even hinted we should ... you were called un-American and not supporting the troops. — Hank Azaria

Candor is entirely in order: only the most devilish anti-American, after all, could question our right to act as suits our fancy. If, say, we choose to invade some defenseless country to capture one of our agents who no longer follows orders, and then try him for crimes committed while on our payroll, who could question the majesty of our system of justice? True, the UN did, but our veto took care of that childish tantrum. — Noam Chomsky

Everyone likes pussy. It's un-American not to like pussy. — Sam Zell

The UN lacked the ability to act without the support of its more powerful members, notably the United States. The American government wanted to avoid a repetition of its unsuccessful intervention in Somalia, in which thirty American troops were killed. President Clinton issued a directive on UN military conditions. The operations would also have to be directly relevant to American interests. These conditions excluded American support for UN intervention to stop the genocide [in Rwanda]. — Jonathan Glover

Whether we start with a provisional status and legal permanent residence ... or we set up some other way to assimilate legally, you can't ever put in something that says, 'You can never become a citizen.' That's un-American. — Jeff Denham

The American way is the way most law-abiding Americans live - in debt. Does this make a balanced budget un-American? — Cullen Hightower

Perhaps these men in the House Caucus Room [Committee on Un-American Activities] are determined to spread silence: to frighten those voices which will shout no, and ask questions, defend the few, attack cruelty and proclaim the rights and dignity of man ... America is going to look very strange to Americans and they will not be at home here, for the air will slowly become unbreathable to all forms of life except sheep. — Martha Gellhorn

I feel like I am not an American in the eyes of my government because of their religious beliefs. I think that is un-American. — Michael Newdow

It is heresy in America to embrace any way of life except as half of a couple. Solitude is un-American. — Erica Jong

Isadore [Duncan], who had an un-American genius for art, for organizing love, maternity, politics and pedagogy on a great personal scale, had also an un-American genius for grandeur. — Janet Flanner

Americans today confuse freedom with not being asked to sacrifice. The fact that you can't have everything you want exactly when you want it has somehow become un-American. — Bill Maher

We have trouble with death. We think it's un-American. We think it won't catch us. Not for us the screaming and wailing, the tearing of hair, the wearing of sackcloth and ashes. These things are thought to be "self-indulgent" - a word favored by those who most manifest it. But what is self-indulgent? What does it mean? Does it mean indulging the self to prevent its being extinguished? Does it mean holding on to one's personhood when in danger of being swept away, being swept into impersonal eternity? If so, we should indulge our screams and wails. We should give ourselves space to indulge our mourning for the individual. Whatever eternity may offer, my hunch is it won't offer individuality. Maybe this is good. Maybe individuality is pain, but let's at least mourn it when we give it up. — Erica Jong

Can anything be more Un-American than the Un-American committee? — Burt Lancaster

If we stuck to the Constitution as written, we would have: no federal meddling in our schools; no Federal Reserve; no U.S. membership in the UN; no gun control; and no foreign aid. We would have no welfare for big corporations, or the "poor"; no American troops in 100 foreign countries; no NAFTA, GAT, or "fast-track"; no arrogant federal judges usurping states rights; no attacks on private property; no income tax. We could get rid of most of the agencies, and most of the budget. The government would be small, frugal, and limited. — Ron Paul

I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat, there is something profoundly un-American about using the brute force of government to bully someone. — Rand Paul

With the Michael Moore movie, certain conservative talk show hosts call him un-American. Him and anybody else who says anything about the war ... To question your country's policy, especially in a war that kills people, is definitely not un-American. It's probably the most patriotic thing you can do. — John Fogerty

But if the UN cannot or will not revise its rules in ways that establish beyond question the legality of the measures the United States must take to protect the American people, then we should unashamedly and explicitly reject the jurisdiction of these rules. — Richard Perle

[The American position at the UN is] essentially impotent, without influence, heavily outvoted, and isolated. — Jeane Kirkpatrick

The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable. — Mary McCarthy

Wonderful songwriting, beautiful production, and deeply rooted in what makes American Roots Music great: Deep Southern Pain. It's the hurt that brings the songs, and it's the songs that heal the hurt. Jonathan's songs bring us there, and back. Check this record out, it's a good 'un. — Mary Gauthier

The agency even had its own mascot - the Blue Eagle. Paying a disturbing, un-American kind of homage to this new, powerful, government agency, shopkeepers displayed the Blue Eagle in their store windows to advertise their compliance with the regulatory rules, and chorus girls wore emblems of the bird on their costumes.11 Consumers, meanwhile, were encouraged to shop only where the Blue Eagle was proudly displayed. In fact, the mascot inspired the name of the NFL franchise created in Philadelphia in 1933, the Philadelphia Eagles. — Mike Lee

I've never had apple pie," I blurted out.
...
"You've never had apple pie?"
"No."
His brows rose. "Why?"
"I don't know. Just never tried it."
"That's so ... so un-American," he said, and I rolled my eyes. "Are you a terrorist? — Jennifer L. Armentrout

One hamburger stand on the entire beach. It felt un-American. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Immigrants have always come into the country with low levels of education. Whether it's the Irish or Italian or Polish, here is the land of opportunity. It's where people come in at the bottom and build themselves up. To try to bring in people who have already made it is un-American. — Lionel Sosa

There was tremendous animus to President [Barack] Obama. Many of people said he was un-American, not a Christian and worse. — Mara Liasson

I know jazz is completely un-American. But the reason why America doesn't like it is because it's not funny. We [americans] have made jazz funny. — Paul Provenza

Wasn't Saddam destroyed? Wasn't Gaddafi liquidated? Didn't Milosevic go to the Hague? All true. But Stalin survived. Kim Jong-un isn't doing too badly, either - though that's probably because he actually has nuclear weapons, as opposed to Iran which might or might not be trying to acquire them and thus remains on the Israeli-American target list. — Robert Fisk

I have been called many things in my life, but if there has been but one constant, one barb, one arrow flung my way time after time, it is the accusation that I am, in essence, nothing more than an escapist. Apparently this is bad, suspect, possibly even un-American. — J. Maarten Troost

Well, that's exactly the wrong attitude. That is not the attitude they had in World War II. Your attitude is that freedom means you can do whatever you want whenever you want it, and that sacrifice is somehow un-American. But the idea that we should also be defensive about our flaws and weaknesses and our vulnerabilities is ridiculous. — Bill Maher

The only people I've ever heard saying that disagreeing with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld is un-American or treasonous are people who disagree with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. — Craig Bruce

It appears it would be quite un-American not to be suspicious of the government or to distrust it. History has taught them a little too much about the tragic frailties of human governments, but it has also driven home to them that they must control firmly political and economic power, which, handed over to any government in their land, could be easily used to oppress them. — Ndabaningi Sithole

He said he ate his food out of our big refrigerators, drove our eight-cylinder American cars, un-hesitatingly used our medicines when he was sick, and relied on the U.S. Army to protect his parents and sisters from Hitler's Germany, and nothing, not one single thing in all his poems, reflected these realities. — J.D. Salinger

Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee - an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic 'fights' against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country. — George Will

I don't care if you're Republican or a Democrat or a Liberal, getting crucified for the way you think or believe, obviously if it's not hurting anyone, it's just Un-American. — Angie Harmon

I've often wondered what alliances and affinities might arise without those badges of right and left. For example, the recent American militia movements were patriarchal, nostalgic, nationalist, gun-happy, and full of weird fantasies about the UN, but they had something in common with us: they prized the local and feared its erasure by the transnational. The guys drilling with guns might've been too weird to be our allies, but they were just the frothy foam on a big wave of alienation, suspicion and fear from people watching their livelihoods and their communities go down the tubes. — Rebecca Solnit

Where have we come as a country, when loving the Constitution, being a patriot, loving Jesus is extremist? Let me tell you what I think is extreme, is a president who was raised by communists, taught by communists, who was supported by communists, and whose self-appointed, self-admitted heroes are communists. And that, I think, is un-American. — Matt Shea

No, seriously, you should bury her up to her neck and throw rocks at her until she dies. What a crazy lunatic, offering her child a normal, healthy mammalian childhood. A woman in full bloom of health daring to use her body according to its biological design and function? Gross! When she could be purchasing from a multinational corporation a totally inferior product for the same purpose. That's downright un-American. And to do so within full view of an intellectual such as yourself!? Tie her up and SET HER ON FUCKING FIRE. — Elisa Albert

All privileges based on wealth, and all emnity to honest men merely because they are wealthy, are un-American. — Theodore Roosevelt

We've got to do more to ensure that people who work full time are not living in poverty and that the massive gap between rich and poor - which is fundamentally un-American, as far as I'm concerned - is somehow dealt with. — Eric Schneiderman

Look, the FBI has the tools necessary un-American activities in our country. It goes on, we shouldn't even be talking about it. — Jeb Bush

I'd leave too, but i still had half a beer left. You can't just leave a beer like that. It's un-American — Meg Cabot

I was in federal prison in West Virginia for three months for contempt of Congress for a refusing to comply with a request of a Congressional committee of Congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee. — Howard Fast

The United Nations has long sought the ability to raise revenues in this manner as a means of reducing its reliance on American and other member nations' dues to sustain the UN's operations. — Frank Gaffney

For one who has an interest in the body as text, airports are treasure troves of information. It seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight, if it does nothing else, allows one the opportunity to make prolonged observations about one's fellow travelers. — Abraham Verghese

There is something very quiet and reserved and pessimistic about Obama's temperament that is deeply un-American. There are those people who claim, "Oh, he wasn't born here" - all that is nonsense. — Jess Row

I don't know anything more piggish - I don't know anything more un-American than saying, 'Oh, I'm worried about my own little handout or my own little program or my own little economy and we'll kick this can down the road and let some future generation deal with it.' — Todd Rokita

The Government finally decided
To wage the war all-out. Defeat
is Un-American.
And they took to the air,
Their women beside them
in bouffant hairdos
putting nail-polish on the
gunship cannon-buttons.
And they never came down
for they found,
the ground
is Pro-Communist. And dirty.
And the insects side with the Viet Cong. — Gary Snyder

Bankruptcy as a solution in kind of un-American. — Thomas W. Horton

Jesus preached socialism and pacifism," I say, "which is wrong and un-American since it discourages entrepreneurship and doesn't support our troops, but I'm a Christian so I forgive him. — James Marshall

On the House Un-American Activities Committee: They'll nail anyone who ever scratched his ass during the National Anthem. — Humphrey Bogart

I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being-that is enough for me; he can't be any worse. I have no special regard for Satan; but I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French. Without — Mark Twain

Organizations like the UN do a lot of good, but there are certain basic realities they never seem to grasp ... Maybe the most important truth that eludes these organizations is that it's insulting when outsiders come in and tell a traumatized people what it will take for them to heal.
You cannot go to another country and make a plan for it. The cultural context is so different from what you know that you will not understand much of what you see. I would never come to the US and claim to understand what's going on, even in the African American culture. People who have lived through a terrible conflict may be hungry and desperate, but they are not stupid. They often have very good ideas about how peace can evolve, and they need to be asked.
That includes women. Most especially women ...
To outsiders like the UN, these soldiers were a problem to be managed. But they were our children. — Leymah Gbowee

you know how I feel about the United Nations. From the beginning, it's functioned as a one-world-order organization whose sole function is to look down its collective nose at the one nation that funds it, the United States. The UN has advocated the transfer of wealth out of the United States, the elimination of international borders, the establishment of a single global currency, international gun control, and the elimination of American jobs. It's become a friendly forum for radical and scientifically absurd ideas like global warming and has advocated cockamamie international tax schemes like cap-and-trade. It has done everything it can to end the sovereignty of the United States. — Don Brown

The American system of education, in its incipiency, and for a long while, was one founded on Bible-teaching and religious exercises. The present system is un-American, anti-American. — Michael Mueller

Q: What can people do to defend their civil liberties?

Phillips: I'm a pacifist, but the most American thing you can do is to dissent, and the most un-American thing you can do is to stifle dissent. When you feel threatened by the suppression of your liberties, you exercise them to the nth degree, you scream your head off every chance you get. You talk to people you don't agree with. Really good advice: Every day, talk to at least two people who don't agree with you. It's the only way it is going to get done. — Utah Phillips

Many parents were strict, and sometimes weeks would pass without us being able to meet those we thought of as our girlfriends. So we learned to savor the denial of gratification - that most un-American of pleasures! - and I for one could subsist quite happily on a diet of emails such as that which I have just described. — Mohsin Hamid

I smoke really good cigars, I don't smoke Cuban cigars. I would never do anything as Un-American as smoke a decent cigar. — Ron White

It's deeply un-American, you know, not to make small talk. It's a very important part of the culture of this country. — Anonymous

A kitchen without an ironing board? Are you kidding? It's un-American. It's like Simon without Garfunkel. — Erma Bombeck

Our federal tax system is, in short, utterly impossible, utterly unjust and completely counterproductive ... [It] reeks with injustice, and is fundamentally un-American — Ronald Reagan

I totally understand that I am a little outrageous in some ways ... I'm a little un-P.C., but I really wish I had the chance to perform for the American fans. — Johnny Weir

Un-American activity cannot be prevented or routed out by employing un-American methods; to preserve freedom we must use the tools that freedom provides. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I feel that America is essentially against the artist, that the enemy of America is the artist, because he stands for individuality and creativeness, and that's un-American somehow. — Henry Miller

Putting pressure on grand juries to indict in my view is un-American. A grand jury should be allowed to be fair and impartial. They shouldn't have people yelling and screaming. — Rudy Giuliani

Such an atmosphere is un-American, the most un-American thing we have to contend with today. It is the climate of a totalitarian country in which scientists are expected to change their theories to match changes in the police state's propaganda line. — Harry S. Truman

I should mention that all of the above explorers were unqualified failures. Not coincidentally, they were also all British. Americans admire success. Englishman admire heroic failure. Given a choice
at least in my reading
I'm un-American enough to take quixotry over efficiency any day. — Anne Fadiman

We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction, consistently violated UN resolutions and in a post-9/11 world no American president could afford to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt. — Peter T. King

My indirect exposure to war for most of my life constantly pushed me toward seeking, and becoming comfortable with, a pro-peace philosophy, as well as refusing to be intimidated by the false charges that such a position is unpatriotic, un-American, and expresses a lack of concern for military personnel. — Ron Paul

It was practically un-American to not set goals and then do everything you could, everything, to reach them. Quitting-it was a dirty word ... — Deb Caletti

What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.' I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I've heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be someone's fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen. — Rand Paul

Hanging a banner from the front of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building that proclaimed it to be the "Native American Embassy," hundreds of protesters hailing from seventy-five Indigenous nations entered the building to sit in. BIA personnel, at the time largely non-Indigenous, fled, and the capitol police chain-locked the doors announcing that the Indigenous protesters were illegally occupying the building. The protesters stayed for six days, enough time for them to read damning federal documents that revealed gross mismanagement of the federal trust responsibility, which they boxed up and took with them. The Trail of Broken Treaties solidified Indigenous alliances, and the "20-Point Position Paper,"14 the work mainly of Hank Adams, provided a template for the affinity of hundreds of Native organizations. Five years later, in 1977, the document would be presented to the United Nations, forming the basis for the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

'Rugged individualism' has meant all the 'individualism' for the masters, while the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of self-seeking 'supermen.' America is perhaps the best representative of this kind of individualism, in whose name political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as virtues; while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom and social opportunity to live is denounced as 'un-American' and evil in the name of that same individuality. — Emma Goldman

Marcia Wilson was a good example of Omega's core strategy for creating a New World Order. It involved placing their people, or moles, in positions of power within the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, the White House and global organizations like the UN, the IMF and the World Bank. This enabled Omega to pull some of the strings of these organizations and to direct American, and world politics, to an extent. — James Morcan

Solitude is considered un-American. — Erica Jong

To divide along the lines of section or caste or creed is un-American. — Theodore Roosevelt

A peacetime draft is the most un-American thing I know. — George Wald

I've said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America! — Harry S. Truman

President Bush has said that he does not need approval from the UN to wage war, and I'm thinking, well, hell, he didn't need the approval of the American voters to become president, either. — David Letterman

Conservatives may worship Adam Smith's 'invisible hand,' but for Obama, the helping hand comes in large measure from the public, not the private sector. To call this 'socialism' is to do violence to the word and to the concept. To call it 'un-American' is a smear. — Jeff Greenfield

American Medical Association [AMA] was strongly opposed to any scheme for group practice and to health insurance ... because they are un-American. — Morris Fishbein

Much as I disliked the un-American idea of marrying a lady with a dowry, I must admit that little Mrs. Godfrey's little private income put everything in a faintly different light. — Preston Sturges

Suppose you had seven credit cards in your purse or wallet and you lost one. Wouldn't you leave the six and go search for the missing one until you found it? I lost a credit card recently and never once pulled out the one I hadn't lost to obsess over it. I felt no urgency about my un-lost credit card. I didn't call a single person to say that I still had my American Express Card. But I did start calling around to see if anyone had seen my lost MasterCard. When you lose something important, you obsess over it; you get preoccupied with it. It's pretty much all you think about. Remember the last time you couldn't find your phone? — Andy Stanley