Quotes About Americans

When outsiders criticize Americans, they regularly note that we seem self-centered, which we are. But few contend we are selfish, and with good reason; we are not.

For most of our history, Americans enjoyed both liberty and security from foreign threats.

The Americans were understandably on hair triggers. There was a good reason for all of this security. For despite TV images of quick victory, much of Baghdad certainly had not fallen and firefights with die-hard Ba'athists loyal to Saddam Hussein were raging all over the city.

According to the latest poll, a record 73 percent of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. But the good news: Gas is so expensive that we'll never get there.

ESPN has announced that they are launching a 3-D sports network. Industry analysts say this will absolutely revolutionize the way Americans don't watch soccer.

In spite of the poor economy, almost 70 percent of Americans occasionally splurge on luxury items -- like a blanket on a plane, or a peanut.

According to USA Today, 74 percent of Americans plan to hand out candy this Halloween. Although President Obama thinks it should be just the top 1 percent.

I am not going to lose Vietnam, he said. I am not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.2 For many Americans then and later the struggle in Vietnam was simply Johnson's War.3

Few Americans—or members of Congress—read The Public Interest. Still, the rapid rise of the neo-cons to intellectual respectability was revealing. And their complaints, especially about the dead hand of bureaucracy, epitomized a new mood of doubt.

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed that the Engel decision practically suppresses all religion, especially in the public schools. Engel and other cases did more than anything else over time to arouse the religious Right from its political quietism. Other Americans, too, thought that the justices had lost their minds.20

Native Americans also insist that "squaw" is a derogatory term. Some believe it derives from a French corruption of an Iroquois epithet for vagina, analogous to "cunt" in English. Others believe it meant "bitch" in Algonquian dialects spoken in Virginia.

Other lakes get similar treatment. According to Michigan markers, whites discovered Lake Michigan, Lake St. Clair, and Lake Superior. Lake Erie gets a more complex marker: "Named for the Erie Indians, this was the last of the Great Lakes discovered by white men..." Actually, none of them was discovered by white men, but this marker at least admits that Native Americans existed and implies they knew of Lake Erie.

Wilson was not only antiblack; he was also far and away our most nativist president, repeatedly questioning the loyalty of those he called "hyphenated Americans." "Any man who carries a hyphen about with him," said Wilson, "carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."27 The American people responded to Wilson's

Herman glowered, saying that clearly only Americans were historians now. 'They have so little of it to learn,' said Dulcie.

would be to rejoin the Paris Agreement and recommit to building a healthier economy and planet. Sixty-one percent of Americans age eighteen to twenty-nine—who made up almost one-fifth of the electorate—would vote for Biden.

Americans, unlike their elected politicians, are not stupid.

If you repress rather than unlock the potential of large groups of Americans, what's that going to do to our economy? It's going to contract, not expand.

We spend billions on marginal and often unnecessary procedures on people who are in the final dying process, yet we leave millions of Americans out of the health insurance system, and America's kids have the worst dental health in the developed world.

To bring the benefits of the digital age to all Americans, the FCC needs to make it easier for companies to build and expand broadband networks. We need to reduce the cost of broadband deployment, and we need to eliminate unnecessary rules that slow down or deter deployment.

Too many Americans mistrust their government. And unnecessary government secrecy feeds this mistrust.

I don't know how anyone can keep a straight face and say they are for deficit reduction while they insist on a permanent tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, completely unpaid for.

When President George W. Bush attempted to reform Social Security, that proposal was more unpopular with Americans than the Iraq war. People love their entitlements.

Americans have always evinced some distrust of government, but the current situation has exacerbated this to a degree that may be unprecedented.

Given the unprecedented ignorance of the Bible in contemporary America, it is likely that more young Americans will only know the Noah of 'Noah.' We can only hope that the film offers even a fraction of the wisdom of the original.