Quotes About American

Are you an American? No, I am not an American. I am the American.

To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.

His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, and he had all the look of an American person who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial, and spell his middle name out.

There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind—the humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter.

One of the things I fucking hate about my fellow Americans: whenever they fly to a foreign country, first thing they do, they try to find as much of America as they can get their hands on, even if it's food in the shitty cafeteria.

You know, most of this feminism business was nothing more than white American women telling non-white women what to do and how to do it, with this patronizing if-you-become-just-like-me-you'll-be-free bullshit

The electric technology is within the gates, and we are numb, deaf, blind and mute about its encounter with the Gutenberg technology, on and through which the American way of life was formed.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: - 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled.

American political thought was not committed to conservatism, nor radicalism, nor moderation. It was above all fluid. As such it contained trends rather than hard lines, and affirmative leadership could guide it into constructive channels.

I suggested then that the prize was not given merely as recognition of past achievement, but also as recognition, a more profound recognition, that the nonviolent way, the American Negro's way, was the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.

The history books, which have almost completely ignored the contribution of the Negro in American history, have only served to intensify the Negroes' sense of worthlessness and to augment the anachronistic doctrine of white supremacy.

For too long the depth of racism in American life has been underestimated. The surgery to extract it is necessarily complex and detailed.

The signals organization of Browning's tactical headquarters was not complete; many extra men and much signals equipment had to be added during the next few days – much of it from American sources. On landing in Holland, he would be out of touch with two-thirds of his command unless his signals organization worked perfectly

I am amazed all over again by how magnified this project's importance has become, far beyond its being a play or an artwork. It is now a test of some kind; but of what, precisely? The incommunicability of the Chinese? If I can't claim to know my actors, I know them as well or as little as I would an American cast. I can no longer call up the notion of Chinese mysteriousness.

To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination.

Speaking for myself, I am no flag waver, no patriot, and I am fully aware that venality, brutality, and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state. But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight I speak as a subject of the American empire? I speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king.

When the sun sets on the American empire, as it will, as it must, Noam Chomsky's work will survive. It will point a cool incriminating finger at a merciless Machiavellian empire as cruel, self-righteous and hypocritical as the ones it has replaced. (The only difference is that it is armed with technology that can visit the kind of devastation on the world that history has never known and the human race cannot begin to imagine.)

I get a feeling that American standards are sort of an unspoken norm, and that whether one resists them, or whether one adopts them, they are there to be reckoned with

In John Adams's worst nightmare, the story of the American Revolution assumed a different formulation: "The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin's electrical rod smote the earth and out sprung General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod—and thence forward these two conducted all the policy, negotiation, legislatures, and war.

There is all the same some truth to the allegation that — as one intimate put it — the American Revolution could be blamed on the Harvard College library.3

The fact is, however, that depending on support beyond the family has been the rule rather than the exception in American history, despite recurring myths about individual achievement and family enterprise.

provisions of the Constitution . . . are organic, living institutions transplanted from English soil.50 The most important provisions . . . constitute the original inheritance of the American people, which they brought over with them from England. . . . Constitutions are not made, but they grow by an inherent law of progress and adaptation to changing circumstances.