Quotes About American

Hell,' I said, 'love is an American cult. We take it too seriously; it's practically a national religion.

Others? He dares to call us others? He's the other. The one who looks most American—and he's the one who is least American! The man is unfit. He shouldn't be there. He shouldn't be there, and it's as simple as that!

And how long will the American people stand for this treachery perpetrated by their elected president? How long will Americans remain asleep while their cherished Constitution is torn to shreds?

The daughter who transports him out of the longed-for American pastoral and into everything that is its antithesis and its enemy, into the fury, the violence, and the desperation of the counterpastoral—into the indigenous American berserk.

Zuckerman, sucker though he was for seriousness, was still not going to be drawn into a discussion about agents and editors. If ever there was a reason for an American writer to seek asylum in Red China, it would be to put ten thousand miles between himself and those discussions.

The American daydream, what made Us great: make a concession, take a stand.

a very modern and American type of ambivalence, a sort of interior war between your deep need to believe and your deep belief that the need to believe is bullshit, that there's nothing left anywhere but sales and salesmen.

Actually, I have never seen an average American household. Except on TV.

Statisticians report that television is watched over six hours a day in the average American household. I don't know any fiction writers who live in average American households. I suspect Louise Erdrich might. Actually I have never seen an average American household. Except on TV.

There is a need for a better American political class. But for now, there is little apparent demand. Those who care the most often hate the most, and one of their chief methods of discrediting ideological allies with whom they compete is by portraying them as too tolerant of the hated political enemy. Kindness is perceived as weakness. Decency is treated as if it's cowardice. Acts of grace are an unthinkable concession to evil.

The most baffling mystery about American democracy is why putting such a brilliant idea into practice seems to attract all the wrong people.

An argument ensued about abundance, leisure, work, nature, and what a second girl kept calling 'the American way.' When I asked her what she meant by 'the American way,' she said, 'Basically the destruction of everything--the world, your happiness, your soul, everything. The complete package. Evil and war. That's who we are, Mr. Countryman.'

the two southern cultures strongly supported every American war no matter what it was about or who it was against.

Two generations ago, historians wrote of European saints and Indian savages. In the last generation, too many scholars have been writing about Indian saints and European savages. The opportunity for our generation is to go beyond that calculus of saints and savages altogether, and write about both American Indians and Europeans with maturity, empathy, and understanding.

From the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, six generations of American scholars were mostly Whig historians of their nation. Their work tended to center on ideas of liberty and freedom, equal rights and republican self-government. Major themes were the triumph of those ideas and institutions over tyranny and slavery.

New generations of scholars continued to study the same subjects, but in a very different spirit. Their work tended to center less on American liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy. It gave more attention to American slavery, racism, inequality, injustice, and corruption.

One of the most stubborn myths of American history is the idea that the frontier promoted equality of material condition.

In every American generation, small minorities with strong material interests have often succeeded in stopping urgent reforms, against the will of the majority.

Yet, in the face of this bloody and intensifying Islamist offensive, Obama has tried to convince the American people that the war against al-Qaeda has been essentially "won" -- by him -- and the terrorist threat is subsiding.1 Denial of the war Islamists have declared on us and denial of the threat it represents is the heart of the Obama doctrine that has guided this nation's policies for more than four years.

HIGHER EDUCATION TODAY is a good news-bad news story. The good news is that a university degree can provide a pass to all to the prodigious bounties of the American economy. The bad news is that the price of the pass can be the equivalent of a Ferrari, putting the average student into hock for a good chunk of his or her working life.

Consider, too, for a moment, Chomsky's misleading comparison of the Soviet and American presses as "mirror images." In fact, the ignorance imposed on the Soviet public by government-controlled media and official

The call to level the playing field, pushed to its logical conclusion, is a call for the systematic subversion of American individualism and democracy. It is the kitsch marxism of our time.

ones trying to prevent him from executing the agenda that the American people installed

The American People in the Great Depression Freedom from Fear Part One DAVID M. KENNEDY