Quotes about america

"It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation."

Paglia, Camille on america   

"The voice of America has no undertones or overtones in it. It repeats its optimistic catchwords in a tireless monologue that has the slightly metallic sound of a gramophone."

Palmer, Vance on america   

"The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the Press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or mature."

Paz, Octavio on america   

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

Pope, Alexander on america   

"It's difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn't available."

Reagan, Ronald on america   

"Double, no triple, our troubles and we'd still be better off than any other people on earth. It is time that we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause."

Reagan, Ronald on america   

"The rising power of the United States in world affairs requires, not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and criticism. Our job in this age, as I see it, is not to serve as cheerleaders for our side in the present world struggle but to help the largest possible number of people to see the realities of the changing and convulsive world in which American policy must operate."

Reston, James on america   

"Thank God we're living in a country where the sky's the limit, the stores are open late and you can shop in bed thanks to television."

Rivers, Joan on america   

"America is a great country, but you can't live in it for nothing."

Rogers, Will on america
3 fans of this quote   

"A trait no other nation seems to possess in quite the same degree that we do -- namely, a feeling of almost childish injury and resentment unless the world as a whole recognizes how innocent we are of anything but the most generous and harmless intentions."

Roosevelt, Eleanor on america   

"I sometimes think that the saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities- a sense of humor and a sense of proportion."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on america   

"This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on america
4 fans of this quote   

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life."

Roosevelt, Theodore on america
9 fans of this quote   

"The American people abhor a vacuum."

Roosevelt, Theodore on america   

"The story of Americans is the story of arrested metamorphoses. Those who achieve success come to a halt and accept themselves as they are. Those who fail become resigned and accept themselves as they are."

Rosenberg, Harold on america   

"It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands."

Santayana, George on america   

"America is a young country with an old mentality."

Santayana, George on america   

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"We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on."

Seattle, Chief on america   

"American energy is the energy of violence, of free-floating resentment and anxiety unleashed by chronic cultural dislocations which must be, for the most part, ferociously sublimated. This energy has mainly been sublimated into crude materialism and acquisitiveness. Into hectic philanthropy. Into benighted moral crusades, the most spectacular of which was Prohibition. Into an awesome talent for uglifying countryside and cities. Into the loquacity and torment of a minority of gadflies: artists, prophets, muckrakers, cranks, and nuts. And into self-punishing neuroses. But the naked violence keeps breaking through, throwing everything into question."

Sontag, Susan on america   

"The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth... the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us."

Sontag, Susan on america   

"In America everything's about who's number one today."

Springsteen, Bruce on america   

"I have met charming people, lots who would be charming if they hadn't got a complex about the British and everyone has pleasant and cheerful manners and I like most of the American voices. On the other hand I don't believe they have any God and their hats are frightful. On balance I prefer the Arabs."

Stark, Freya on america   

"America: It's like Britain, only with buttons."

Starr, Ringo on america   

"Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are."

Stein, Gertrude on america   

"The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in."

Stein, Gertrude on america   

"This monster of a land, this mightiest of nations, this spawn of the future, turns out to be the macrocosm of microcosm me."

Steinbeck, John on america   

"The biggest difference between ancient Rome and the USA is that in Rome the common man was treated like a dog. In America he sets the tone. This is the first country where the common man could stand erect."

Stone, I. F. on america   

"Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy."

Thatcher, Margaret on america
4 fans of this quote   

"To us Americans much has been given; of us much is required. With all our faults and mistakes, it is our strength in support of the freedom our forefathers loved which has saved mankind from subjection to totalitarian power."

Thomas, Norman on america   

"America is just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."

Thompson, Hunter S. on america   

"The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle."

Tocqueville, Alexis De on america   

"Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved."

Tocqueville, Alexis De on america   

"America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair."

Toynbee, Arnold on america   

"In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?"

Twain, Mark on america
4 fans of this quote   

"It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it."

Twain, Mark on america
4 fans of this quote   

"There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American."

Twain, Mark on america   

"On Thanksgiving Day, all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment -- half- time."

Unknown, Source on america   

"There are no second acts in American lives."

Fitzgerald, F. Scott on america   

"France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter -- it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart."

Unknown, Source on america   

"America is a willingness of the heart."

Unknown, Source on america