Vice Of America Quotes & Sayings

The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable; praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties. The great mass of worldly men and of learned men are absolutely incapable of prayer. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Wasn't this great?" Nudge asked excitedly. "I can't believe we're in the White House! I want to be president someday." "I'll be vice president," the Gasman offered. "You guys would be great," I said politely. Yes, they could run on the Mutant Party ticket, with a freak-of-nature platform. No prob. I'm sure America is ready for that. — James Patterson

The key to creating the mental space before responding is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a way of being present: paying attention to and accepting what is happening in our lives. It helps us to be aware of and step away from our automatic and habitual reactions to our everyday experiences. — Elizabeth Thornton

It has ever been my hobby-horse to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among them. You say it is impossible. If I should agree with you in this, I would still say, let us try the experiment, and preserve our equality as long as we can. A better system of education for the common people might preserve them long from such artificial inequalities as are prejudicial to society, by confounding the natural distinctions of right and wrong, virtue and vice. — John Adams

Let us concede at the outset that, in a free society, freedom will frequently be used badly. Freedom, by definition, includes freedom to do good or evil, to act nobly or basely. Thus we should not be surprised that there is a considerable amount of vice, licentiousness, and vulgarity in a free society. Given the warped timber of humanity, freedom is simply an expression of human flaws and weaknesses. But if freedom brings out the worst in people, it also brings out the best. — Dinesh D'Souza

in our culture, women can do anything a man can. and vice versa."
don alfonso's eyebrows shot up. "i do not believe it."
"it's true," sally said defiantly.
"in America, the women hunt while the men have babies? — Douglas Preston

It is hardly fair to blame America for the state of San Francisco, for its population is cosmopolitan and its seaport attracts the floating vice of the Pacific; but be the cause what it may, there is much room for spiritual betterment. — Arthur Conan Doyle

No news conferences? Interviews now only with friendly journalists? You can't be president or vice president and govern in that style, as a sequestered figure. This has been Mr. Bush's style the past few years, and see where it got us. You must address America in its entirety, not as a sliver or a series of slivers but as a full and whole entity, a great nation trying to hold together. When you don't, when you play only to your little piece, you contribute to its fracturing. — Peggy Noonan

Why not, when it can be done without exposure or expense, let me rescue some of America's miserable children from vice and guilt? — Dorothea Dix

Far more demoralizing to Americans than British operations in New England was their invasion of the Chesapeake. In 1814 London officials ordered Major General Robert Ross "to effect a diversion on the coasts of the United States of America in favor of the army employed in the defence of Upper and Lower Canada." At the same time, Prevost, who was angry over the burning of Dover and other depredations in Upper Canada, asked Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane to "assist in inflicting that measure of retaliation which shall deter the enemy from a repetition of similar outrages."104 The British had successfully targeted the Chesapeake in 1813, and both Ross and Cochrane regarded it the best place to achieve their goals in 1814. The bay's extensive shoreline remained exposed, and the region's two most important cities - Washington and Baltimore - offered inviting targets. — Donald R. Hickey

One of the main reasons America should re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to cooperation. He appointed Republican Secretaries of Defense, the Army and Transportation. He appointed a Vice President who ran against him in 2008. — William J. Clinton

It wasn't northern agitators who pushed Negroes to question their country, as so many southern whites wanted to believe. It was their own pride, their patriotism, their deep and abiding belief in the possibility of democracy that inspired the Negro people. And why not? Who knew American democracy more intimately than the Negro people? They knew democracy's every virtue, vice, and shortcoming, its voice and contour, by its profound and persistent absence in their lives. The failure to secure the blessings of democracy was the feature that most defined their existence in America. Every Sunday they made their way to their sanctuaries and fervently prayed to the Lord to send them a sign that democracy would come to them. — Margot Lee Shetterly

You have a great potential. — Lailah Gifty Akita

It was February sixth: eight days until Valentine's Day. I was dateless, as usual, deep in the vice grip of unrequited love. It was bad enough not having a boyfriend for New Year's Eve. Now I had to cope with Valentine datelessness, feeling consummate social pressure from every retailer in America who stuck hearts and cupids in their windows by January second to rub it in. — Joan Bauer

I'm from North Carolina, and I stand here humbled, honored, and proud to place in nomination for the office of vice-president of the United States of America, my friend and my senator from the great state of North Carolina: John Edwards. — Harvey Gantt

In America, any boy can grow up to become president. Or, if he never grows up, vice president. — Pat Paulsen

This point seems counter-intuitive, given the amount of conspicuous vulgarity, vice, and immorality in America. Indeed some Islamic fundamentalists argue that their regimes are morally superior to the United States because they seek to foster virtue among the citizens. — Dinesh D'Souza

more real depravity, more shocking wickedness, more undisguised vice and immorality is to be witnessed at midday in the most public thoroughfares of Perth, with its population of 1500, than in any other city of fifty times its population, either in Europe or America. — Simon Adams

Lincoln failed in business. He failed as a farmer. He lost running for state legislature. He had a nervous breakdown. He was rejected for a job as a land officer. When he was finally elected to the legislature, he lost the vote to be speaker. He ran for Congress and lost. He ran for and lost a U.S. Senate seat. He ran for vice president and lost. He ran for the Senate and lost again. And, when he was finally elected president, the nation he was elected to lead broke apart. But by this time, all the activities, experiences, and people he came to know in the process helped him set a direction for that country that will stand as one of America's great legacies. — Anonymous

I have seen purer liquors, better segars, finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtesans here in San Francisco than in any other place I have ever visited; and it is my unbiased opinion that California can and does furnish the best bad things that are available in America. — Hinton Helper

If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven? — David Hilbert

The whites have resolved to destroy our liberty and have therefore brought a force commensurate to their intentions. The Cape, after a proper resistance, has fallen into their hands, but the enemy found only a town and plain in ashes; the forts were blown up, and all was burnt. — Toussaint Louverture

You cannot tell a poor boy from a small country town on the plains of South Dakota who has had the opportunity to be a teacher, a mayor, a senator, and a vice president, that America is not a nation of promise. — Hubert H. Humphrey

Thanks to the leadership of Vice President Gore, we have a government for the Information Age, once again a government that is a progressive instrument of the common good, rooted in our oldest values of opportunity, responsibility and community, devoted to fiscal responsibility, determined to give our people the tools they need to make the most of their own lives in the 21st century, a 21st century government for 21st century America. — William J. Clinton

I'd rather be more of the hippie country chick - as in, instead of pointing a finger, just maybe saying, 'We're all screw-ups. We're all in this kind of together. We're all just figuring this out.' — Kacey Musgraves

Now, I'm an apolitical person (which I realize is its own kind of misleading political posture, but I think you know what I mean). I do not have conventional political affiliations. I follow presidential elections the same way I follow the NFL playoffs: obsessively and dispassionately. But Sarah Palin was (and is) a real problem. Her nomination for vice president in 2008 represents the most desperate inclinations of the Republican Party. In two hundred years, I suspect historians will use Palin as an example of how insane America became in the decade following the destruction of the World Trade Center, and her origin story will seem as extraterrestrial and eccentric as Abe Lincoln jumping out of a window to undermine a voting quorum in 1840. — Chuck Klosterman

I'll wait for however long it takes
because I know she's afraid that if she
allows herself to be totally happy, it will
be taken away from her again. She needs
to know that I'm not going anywhere. I can
tell her all I want, but she needs to feel it. — L.M. Trio

I watched that new reality show on ABC with Charlie Gibson, 'America's Next Top Vice President.' ... Oh, what an exciting show that is! Did you see Sarah Palin's interview with Charlie Gibson? Did you all watch that? In fact, John McCain was watching it at home, and at one point, he turned to his wife and said, 'She looks really familiar.' — Jay Leno

I'm a simple guy, you know? If I do something, it's not going to be, 'Look at this, look at that.' It just happens. — Mariano Rivera

Whether Barack Obama is simply incompetent as president or has some hidden agenda to undermine this country, at home and abroad, he has nearly everything he needs to ruin America, including a fool for a vice president — Thomas Sowell

...9/11 was immediately understood not only as a tragedy for the United States and the city of New York but also as a global outrage, which took the lives of so many citizens from across the world. The headline emphasized the manner in which questions of identity were geographically and emotionally connected - the local (New York, Pennsylvania and Washington), the national (United States), and the global. Shortly afterwards, however, the event became reinscribed in overwhelmingly national terms - 'Attack on America'. Tragically, as former Vice President Al Gore has said, the United States has squandered that global goodwill and solidarity by its largely unilateral engagement in Iraq and other activities which have been judged by others to be inimical to international law, such as extraordinary rendition, detention camps, and the doctrine of pre-emption. We are certainly not all Americans now. — Klaus Dodds

The Apotheosis of Washington - a 4,664-square-foot fresco that covers the canopy of the Capitol Rotunda - was completed in 1865 by Constantino Brumidi. Known as "The Michelangelo of the Capitol," Brumidi had laid claim to the Capitol Rotunda in the same way Michelangelo had laid claim to the Sistine Chapel, by painting a fresco on the room's most lofty canvas - the ceiling. Like Michelangelo, Brumidi had done some of his finest work inside the Vatican. Brumidi, however, immigrated to America in 1852, abandoning God's largest shrine in favor of a new shrine, the U.S. Capitol, which now glistened with examples of his mastery - from the trompe l'oeil of the Brumidi Corridors to the frieze ceiling of the Vice President's Room. And yet it was the enormous image hovering above the Capitol Rotunda that most historians considered to be Brumidi's masterwork. Robert — Dan Brown

Experienced radiologists who evaluate chest X-rays as "normal" or "abnormal" contradict themselves 20% of the time when they see the same picture on separate occasions. — Daniel Kahneman

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that. And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit. The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. — Joe Biden

Impeach the President and the Vice President, they are traitors to America, and so are all of their supporters. Impeach! Anyone in congress who refuses to save our union from these traitors by doing nothing needs to be recalled. — Roseanne Barr

Milwaukee has more bars and more churches per capita than almost any other city in North America. I'm not sure if there's a relationship in that. Does too much prayer cause you to drink? Or vice versa? — Nanci Rathbun

What is still more to our shame as civilized Christians, we debauch their morals already too prone to vice, and we introduce among them wants and perhaps disease which they never before knew and which serve only to disturb that happy tranquility which they and their forefathers enjoyed. If anyone denies the truth of this assertion, let him tell me what the natives of the whole extent of America have gained by the commerce they have had with Europeans. — James Cook

Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me.
Joe Biden, speaking at a town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire, Sept. 10, 2008 — Joe Biden