Quotes About American

From the beginning, American California was caught in a paradox of reverent awe and exploitative use.

Hardcore groups were singing songs about Ronald Reagan. I wasn't interested in this and preferred to sing about the darkness shimmering beneath the shiny quilt of American pop culture. I suppose you could say that Sonic Youth was always trying to defy people's expectations.

If you look at military and intelligence positions from the 1950s, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been against American national interests.

China has no such economic necessity. Its economy can grow well, even without American investments.

Chinese communism is not a threat to American democracy. Instead, the success and competitiveness of the Chinese economy and society is the real challenge.

even though many American businesses continue to prosper in China, a growing number of firms have given up hope that the playing field will ever be level. Some have accepted the Faustian bargain of maximizing today's earnings per share while operating under restrictions that jeopardize their future competitiveness. But that doesn't mean they're happy about it.

I can't help smiling at that. He is such an American, this son of mine. He thinks one's life can be distilled to a narrative that has a beginning and an end. He knows nothing about the kind of sacrifice that, once made, can never be either fully forgotten or fully borne. And how could he? I have protected him from all of that.

I had forgotten how gently time passes in Paris. As lively as the city is, there's a stillness to it, a peace that lures you in. In Paris, with a glass of wine in your hand, you can just be. All along the Seine, street lamps come on, apartment windows turn golden. "It's seven," Julien says, and I realize that he has been keeping time all along, waiting. He is so American. No sitting idle, forgetting oneself, not for this young man of mine.

Rossiter said that conservatism had a "high duty to maintain its historic links with American liberalism," and vice versa. "The American, like his tradition, is deeply liberal, deeply conservative," Rossiter wrote. "If this is a paradox, so, too, is America

The Reagan Administration has fostered a climate in which a barest majority of the Supreme Court caters to the passions and hatreds of the American mob, stripping away the constitutional shield outside our bedrooms.... How tragically ironic that an Administration that promised to get Government "off our backs" is now so active in draping Government gumshoes over every part of our anatomies.

We ...recognize the forces which have been trying to falsify American history—the forces which drive away many Americans to a corner of compromise with those who would distort the ideals of men that died for freedom.

If you look at history, you see that human flourishing exploded beginning about the time two things first appeared: the new American republic and free market capitalism. If you plot the history of human prosperity going back over a thousand years, what you see is a flat line hovering just above zero until the late eighteenth century; then the line turns upward, and it hasn't turned back.

Fitzgerald was telling us that Americans are inclined to bypass act two; they don't want to go through the pain that self-discovery requires.

If you ever need to quickly get the attention of a roomful of American musicians, "A-one!" will do it every time. Warning: do not use this command frivolously.

I love Stephen King as much as any red rum drinking American, but I resent the fact that I, the bookseller, am his bitch.

Webster's dislike of words that weren't pronounced the way they looked led him to decree that words such as centre and theatre should be spelled center and theater; he also dropped the silent u from words such as colour, favour and honour. In fact, Webster was single-handedly responsible for most of the differences between British and American spelling that survive to this day.

The moon bobs at the window, full and bright, and she is drawn to the French doors to look out upon the sight. It still seems unfathomable to her that American astronauts have now set their feet on the moon, though she is struck by how quickly something that was once considered impossible can pass over into the realm of the accomplished.

There are whole precincts of voters in this country whose united intelligence does not equal that of one representative American woman.

And now, he's wrapped around her finger She's the center of his whole world And his heart belongs to that sweet, little, beautiful, wonderful, perfect All-American girl

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies... is a foolish idea. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.

They do not like to hear such expressions as "Negro literature," "Negro poetry," "African art," or "thinking black"; and, roughly speaking, we must concede that such things do not exist. These things did not figure in the courses which they pursued in school, and why should they? "Aren't we all Americans? Then, whatever is American is as much the heritage of the Negro as of any other group in

The American constitutional order is meant to create a deliberative democracy, in which debate and discussion accompany accountability. This is not merely a system of majority rule, through which majorities get to do as they like simply because they are majorities. Reason-giving is central, and a deliberative democracy gives reasons.

The American people await action. They didn't send us here to bicker. They ask us to rise above the merely partisan. "In crucial things, unity" and this, my friends, is crucial.