Quotes About Exceptionalism

While most trudge through their days straight-jacketed in the social compact, living for others as much as or more than for themselves, a select few excel.

That is what we stand for - for an America that is every bit as compassionate as it is exceptional.

Travelgate eventually faded, and the nation somehow survived - American exceptionalism at work again.

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.

Perfect numbers, like perfect men, are very rare.

No one is like me, Sadie agreed. My amazingness is unique.

Blaming the Victim occurs exclusively within an exceptionalistic framework, and it consists of applying exceptionalistic explanations to universalistic problems. This represents an illogical departure from fact, a method, in Mannheim's words, of systematically distorting reality, of developing an ideology. Blaming the Victim can take its place in a long series of American ideologies that have rationalized cruelty and injustice.

Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.

Americans like happy history—narratives that make us look smart, brave, and exceptional. We want a history that has been cherry-picked, one that ignores our mistreatment of the weak and disfavored—a history that can be celebrated at picnics, parades, and in smug conversations. This approach to history is neither honest nor mature.

Nietzsche talked about "good and bad" in the context of nobility. The nobles regarded the exceptional as good and the mediocre as bad. When the "good and bad" of the nobility was replaced by the "good and evil" of the mob, exceptionalism was declared evil, and mediocrity was sanctified. The holy mediocrities are now everywhere. The kingdom of mediocrity is absolute … absolute shit!

Our country's cheerleaders are wedded to the notion of American exceptionalism. But when it comes to the machinations of power, we are all too similar to other societies and ones that have come before us. There is an implacable brutality to power that is familiar throughout the world and throughout history.

Everything great and intelligent is in the minority

I don't want the staggeringly wealthy Elton John and his family to represent the standard of gay fatherhood any more than straight people want the stunningly beautiful Angelina Jolie and her family to represent the standard of heterosexual parenthood. Stars are outliers; stars are exceptions.

It often happens that when a person possesses a particular ability to an extraordinary degree, nature makes up for it by leaving him or her incompetent in every other department.

There hasn't been anybody else write a Constitution like Madison. There just hasn't been, because that person hasn't existed anywhere but here.

Contrast the United States with any country on the face of the earth today and ask yourself whether the situation of the United States is not the best to be found.

Why on Earth would the United States ever want to be more like Europe? Correct me if I'm wrong, but we left, did we not? Not only did we leave that older, lesser world behind, but we left skid-marks along the way with an entire continent eating our proverbial dust.

I like that I can stand out from the crowd.

Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules about sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers.

Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers.

La conciencia de mi honradez se me subió a la cabeza, tuve el sentimiento grandioso de que yo era un carácter, un faro completamente blanco en medio del mar cenagoso de los hombres, un mostrenco extraordinario.

Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven.

The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization

America's exceptionalism, American leadership, the American model, the American values are not [first with Donald Trump] - they're something that end at the border.