Quotes about america

"I pray we are still a young and courageous nation, that we have not grown so old and so fat and so prosperous that all we can think about is to sit back with our arms around our money bags. If we choose to do that I have no doubt that the smoldering fires will burst into flame and consume us -- dollars and all."

Johnson, Lyndon B. on america   

"Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging."

Johnson, Samuel on america   

"I am willing to love all mankind, except an American."

Johnson, Samuel on america
3 fans of this quote   

"Every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. this is not the case."

Kennedy, John F. on america   

"Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be..."

Keynes, John Maynard on america
3 fans of this quote   

"Knavery seems to be so much the striking feature of its inhabitants that it may not in the end be an evil that they will become aliens to this kingdom."

King George III on america   

"I can never suppose this country so far lost to all ideas of self-importance as to be willing to grant America independence; if that could ever be adopted I shall despair of this country being ever preserved from a state of inferiority and consequently falling into a very low class among the European States."

King George III on america   

"America is not a democracy, it's an absolute monarchy ruled by King Kid. In a nation of immigrants, the child is automatically more of an American than his parents. Americans regard children as what Mr. Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs called betters. Aping their betters, American adults do their best to turn themselves into children. Puerility exercises droit de seigneur everywhere."

King, Florence on america   

"For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon."

Kissinger, Henry on america   

"The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy."

Kronenberger, Louis on america   

"America does to me what I knew it would do: it just bumps me. The people charge at you like trucks coming down on you -- no awareness. But one tries to dodge aside in time. Bump! bump! go the trucks. And that is human contact."

Lawrence, D. H. on america   

"America is neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron-clanking little wills, everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life's sacred spontaneity. They can't trust life until they can control it."

Lawrence, D. H. on america   

"America and its demons, Europe and its ghost."

Le Monde on america
4 fans of this quote   

"The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, The trouble with this country is..."

Lewis, Sinclair on america
3 fans of this quote   

"I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum."

Lewis, Wyndham on america   

"No American worth his salt should go around looking for a root. I advance this in all modesty, as a not unreasonable opinion."

Lewis, Wyndham on america   

"To me Americanism means an imperative duty to be nobler than the rest of the world."

London, Meyer on america   

"Part of the American dream is to live long and die young. Only those Americans who are willing to die for their country are fit to live."

Macarthur, Douglas on america   

"America is promises to take! America is promises to us to take them."

Macleish, Archibald on america   

"The American mood, perhaps even the American character, has changed. There are few manifestations any longer of the old American self-assurance which so irritated Dickens. Instead, there is a sense of frustration so perceptible that even our politicians have attempted to exploit it."

Macleish, Archibald on america   

"There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away."

Mailer, Norman on america
4 fans of this quote   

"Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American."

Malcolm X on america   

"I don't see America as a mainland, but as a sea, a big ocean. Sometimes a storm arises, a formidable current develops, and it seems it will engulf everything. Wait a moment, another current will appear and bring the first one to naught."

Maritain, Jacques on america   

"The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air."

Mccarthy, Mary on america   

"America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that's 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We're in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good."

Mcguane, Thomas on america   

"People in America, of course, live in all sorts of fashions, because they are foreigners, or unlucky, or depraved, or without ambition; people live like that, but Americans live in white detached houses with green shutters. Rigidly, blindly, the dream takes precedence."

Mead, Margaret on america   

"Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quacks, agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous. What have we to offer the world besides the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment?"

Miller, Henry on america
3 fans of this quote   

"Perhaps I am still very much of an American. That is to say, na?ve, optimistic, gullible. In the eyes of a European, what am I but an American to the core, an American who exposes his Americanism like a sore. Like it or not, I am a product of this land of plenty, a believer in superabundance, a believer in miracles."

Miller, Henry on america   

"I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots."

Miller, Henry on america
6 fans of this quote   

"I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen."

Miller, Henry on america
7 fans of this quote   

"Being blunt with your feelings is very American. In this big country, I can be as brash as New York, as hedonistic as Los Angeles, as sensuous as San Francisco, as brainy as Boston, as proper as Philadelphia, as brawny as Chicago, as warm as Palm Springs, as friendly as my adopted home town of Dallas, Fort Worth, and as peaceful as the inland waterway that rubs up against my former home in Virginia Beach."

Navratilova, Martina on america   

"If you think the United States has stood still, who built The largest shopping center in the world?"

Nixon, Richard M. on america
3 fans of this quote   

"It is impossible for a stranger traveling through the United States to tell from the appearance of the people or the country whether he is in Toledo, Ohio, or Portland, Oregon. Ninety million Americans cut their hair in the same way, eat each morning exactly the same breakfast, tie up the small girls curls with precisely the same kind of ribbon fashioned into bows exactly alike; and in every way all try to look and act as much like all the others as they can."

Northcliffe, Lord on america   

"The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail. You can safely appeal to the United Nations in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down."

O'Brien, Conor Cruise on america   

"Is America a land of God where saints abide for ever? Where golden fields spread fair and broad, where flows the crystal river? Certainly not flush with saints, and a good thing, too, for the saints sent buzzing into man's ken now are but poor-mouthed ecclesiastical film stars and clich?-shouting publicity agents. Their little knowledge bringing them nearer to their ignorance, ignorance bringing them nearer to death, but nearness to death no nearer to God."

O'Casey, Sean on america   

"America has run the world for at least the past 50 years, and when you're at the top that long, you forget what it's like in the valley. There are 5+ billion people out there now who are willing to study harder, work harder for less money and be more industrious than we are. And we're linked to them by technology. With telecommunications, you can have your bookkeeping done in Madra, India, for less than it costs here. Today technology can replace whole new industries, so you have to stay flexible. To survive today, you have to be able to walk on quicksand and dance with electrons."

Ogden, Frank on america   

"One can not be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work."

O'Keeffe, Georgia on america   

"I take space to be the central fact to man born in America. I spell it large because it comes large here. Large and without mercy."

Olson, Charles on america   

"Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have a political convention without politics to nominate a leader who's out in front of nobody? Maybe our national mindlessness is the very thing that keeps us from turning into one of those smelly European countries full of pseudo-reds and crypto-fascists and greens who dress like forest elves."

O'Rourke, P. J. on america   

"America once had the clarity of the pioneer ax."

Osborne, Robert on america