Quotes About American

One of the great things and one of the horrible things about the American character is this extraordinary optimism and arrogance that everything will continue to be great and keep looking up.

Optimism - even, and perhaps especially in the face of difficulty - has long been an American hallmark.

I will not put the life of an American service member on the line unless that is the option of last resort.

When we look at the majority of the American people, when they believe that their leadership is letting them down, there is only one option out there for us, and that's to change that leadership.

My great inspiration has always been Studs Terkel, who is a wonderful American oral historian. He was a radio DJ at first, interviewed a lot of jazz musicians, and at some point started to interview Americans about work.

I am particularly looking forward to meeting ordinary American people and hearing about their extraordinary lives.

I hope that as the Senate and American people learn more about me, they will see that I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.

American science is much more organized, much more hierarchical than British science has been.

I really liked the food in Japan. There is something so organized, neat, and methodical about it. They put a lot of care and quality into their cooking. I also love Mediterranean, New American, and Italian food, because the cuisines borrow influences from all over the world.

'Jack & Diane' was originally about race. I was playing nightclubs, and I was seeing new American couples, mixed-race couples. I thought it was cool. The song was my effort to make a song about that, but of course the record-company guy didn't like it.

I'm not sure the Russians would be happy that their iconic wooly mammoth has North American origins.

The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.

My initial training was on the keyboard - mainly the great American songbook. In junior high, during the day, I was a classical clarinetist, but after school, I played New Orleans jazz and big-band music.

It's a wonderful city and every American has enjoyed New Orleans in one way or the other.

I really feel that my life story is a continuation of the Great American Dream - the immigrant who comes to this country and is allowed to excel. How many other countries would let me do that?

It seems strange to the rest of the world, but we Americans can't seem to stop talking about how other countries should be democratic like we are.

There are a lot of advantages to being an American, but being an amateur athlete is not one of them. Other countries step into your life more, but they take care of you.

I think the American people have become more reliant upon government and less reliant upon themselves and that they now tend to put security ahead of freedom, but I think freedom is the most important aspect of our lives.

It would be hard to exaggerate Ernest Hemingway's influence over American literature, but his influence on our lives is probably larger still.

The two endorsements I'm most proud of come from Isabel Wilkerson and Toni Morrison. The latter is the greatest American fiction writer of our time, and the former is on her way to being the greatest American nonfiction writer of our time.

My God, do we have some of the most amazing people. You won't find stories like ours. You almost feel like, if there's ever a need to tell an American story, just come to Detroit.

The American order reveals a method that was largely the outcome of material necessity, as exemplified by the Colonial style and the grid.

The outlaw, in the American imagination, is a subject of romance - a 'good' bad man, he is typically a master of escape, a crack shot, a ladies' man.

Music definitely gave me a focus. I was an artist without an outlet. Let's just say if I was not famous, I could have been infamous. I could've had my own episode of 'American Gangster.'