I don't believe the federal government should be
involved in retirement. I think it's too important to
leave it to the government.
- Peter Schiff, who forecast the U.S. housing bust and the U.S. credit
meltdown
Education has in
America's whole history been the major hope for improving the individual and society.
- Gunnar Myrdal
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.
- Camille Paglia, American author and educator
The average American would travel in his car to the bathroom
if the door was wide enough.
- Anon
If you're going to America, bring your own
food.
- Fran Lebowitz, U.S. journalist, Fran Lebowitz's Travel Hints
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have
been more wonderful to miss it.
- Mark Twain
America
has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
- Oscar Wilde
America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is
to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a
creative writer, painter, or musician. To be a rabbit is better still.
- Henry Miller
No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance
about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor
anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear
native land.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, American author
The business of America is business.
- Calvin Coolidge, American Republican politician and president
The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three
hundred years.
- Oscar Wilde, Anglo-Irish playwright and author
Ours is the only country deliberately founded on a
good idea.
- John Gunther, American journalist
American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more
terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
- James Baldwin, American author
In America only the successful writer is important, in France all
writers are important, in England no writer is important, and in Australia you have to explain what a
writer is.
— Geoffrey Cottrell (writer)
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.
- John Updike, U.S. Author
God bless the USA, so large,
So friendly, and so rich.
- W. H. Auden, Anglo-American poet
In Boston they ask, "How much does he know?" In New
York, "How much is he worth?" In Philadelphia, "Who were his parents?"
- Mark Twain
I have no further use for America. I wouldn't go
back there if Jesus Christ was President.
- Charlie Chaplin, British comic actor and filmmaker
America makes prodigious mistakes, America has
colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell,
of course, but at least she isn't standing still.
- e. e. cummings, U.S. poet
Topographically the country is magnificent - and terrifying. Why terrifying?
Because nowhere else in the world is the divorce between man and nature so complete. Nowhere have I
encountered such a dull, monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak.
- Henry Miller, American author
The typical American youth is always ready to give those who are older than himself the full
benefit of his inexperience.
- Unknown wise person
America believes in education: the average
professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
- Evan Esar
America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from
barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
- Georges Clemenceau, French statesman
I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get
rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by
phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. poet and philosopher
America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region
where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses.
- Woodrow Wilson, U.S. president
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.
- Wyndham Lewis, British author and painter
I don't see much future for the Americans . . . Everything about the behavior of
American society reveals that it's half Judaized, and the other half negrified. How can one expect a State
like that to hold together?
- Adolf Hitler, German dictator
Deep down, the U.S., with its space, its technological refinement, its bluff good
conscience, even in those spaces which it opens up for simulation, is the only remaining primitive
society.
- Jean Baudrillard, French seismologist
This, then, is held to be the duty of the [American]
man of wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance;
to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and, after doing so, to
consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to
administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is
best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community - the man of wealth thus
becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom,
experience and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.
- Andrew Carnegie (American industrialist and philanthropist who amassed a fortune in the steel industry
and donated millions of dollars for the benefit of the public.)
America is a model of force and freedom & moderation - with all the coarseness
and rudeness of its people.
- Lord Byron, English poet
That joke was lost on the foreigner - guides cannot
master the subtleties of the American joke.
- Mark Twain
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 millimetres 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.
- Thomas McGuane, U.S. Author
America is the most grandiose experiment the world
has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.
- Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist
America is a young country with an old mentality.
- George Santayana, U.S. philosopher and poet
Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two
qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio- empty boasting of American power, American virtue,
American know-how- has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades. . . . Here at home- within the
family, so to speak- our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of
petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own
virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others.
- Daniel J. Boorstin, American historian
America does not concern itself now with Impressionism. We own no involved
philosophy. The psyche of the land is to be found in its movement. It is to be felt as a dramatic force of
energy and vitality. We move; we do not stand still. We have not yet arrived at the stock-taking stage.
- Martha Graham, U.S. dancer, choreographer. "The American Dance," in Modern Dance (ed. by Virginia
Stewart, 1935).
America fears the unshaven legs, the unshaven men's cheeks, the aroma of
perspiration, and the limp prick. Above all it fears the limp prick.
- Walter Abish, Austrian-born U.S. author
America loves the representation of its heroes to be not just larger than life,
but stupendously, awesomely bigger than anything else. If blue whales built statues to each other they'd be
smaller then these.
- Simon Hoggart, British journalist.
The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light.
Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight
virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech. We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else
comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.
- Richard Rodriguez, American author
English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all
about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.
- Malcolm Bradbury, British author
Europe and the U.K. are yesterday's world. Tomorrow is in the United States.
- R. W. "Tiny" Rowland (b. 1917), British businessman
Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into
an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of
such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the battle field.
- James Baldwin, American author
True, there is government harassment, but there still is that
relative freedom to fight. I can attack my government, try to organize to change it. That's more than I can
do in Moscow, Peking, or Havana.
- Saul Alinsky
This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for
chewing gum.
- Elbert Hubbard
Don't get the idea that I'm one of those goddamn
radicals. Don't get the idea that I'm knocking the American system.
-Al Capone
I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great
numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.
-John Wayne
Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character: it is not a matter of
birthplace or creed or line of descent.
- Theodore Roosevelt
We talk about the American Dream, and want to tell the world
about the American Dream, but what is that Dream, in most cases, but the dream of material things? I
sometimes think that the United States for this reason is the greatest failure the world has ever seen.
- Eugene O'Neill
We need some great statements about what America is about and what we can do about
it.
-Theodore M. Hesburgh
America is the best half-educated country in the
world.
- Nicholas Murray Butler
We don't know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it.
- Will Rogers
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has
gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
- Georges Clemenceau
We must stop talking about the American dream and start
listening to the dreams of Americans.
- Reubin Askew
The old platitude must be repeated once again: the United States is the society with the
least history prior to the age of progress.
- George P. Grant
America is the only country left where we teach languages so
that no pupil can speak them.
- John Erskine
This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good
place for all of us to live in.
-Theodore Roosevelt
At the moment the United States is the most powerful, the most prosperous, and the most
dangerous country in the world.
- Robert Maynard Hutchins
All Americans Should Be Texans.
- Bumper
Sticker
The U. S. is the most dangerous and destructive power in the world.
- Anthony Lewis
Behold a republic gradually but surely becoming the supreme moral factor in disputes.
- William Jennings Bryan
You can make a killing as a playwright in America, but you
can't make a living.
- Sherwood Anderson
I think we must save America from the missionary idea that you must get the whole world on
to the American way of life. This is really a big world danger.
- Gunnar Myrdal
There is a malaise that exists in your land-what appears to many as the sudden and tragic
disappearance of the American dream which, in some ways, has turned to nightmare.
- J. J. Greene
The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.
- Woodrow Wilson
I believe that the heaviest blow ever dealt at liberty's head will be dealt by this nation
[the United States] in the ultimate failure of its example to the earth..
- Charles Dickens
[America is] still the best country for the common man -
white or black . . . if he can't make it here he won't make it anywhere else..
- Eric Hoffer
I don't know much about Americanism, but it's a damned good word with which to carry an
election.
- Warren G. Harding
Who was the first around the moon? An atheist Russian or Godfearing Americans?
- Don Carpenter
You hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear
these words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist!" You never hear a real American
talk like that.
- Frank Hague
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.
- Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. Rep. politician and president
We are now at the point where we must decide whether we are to honor the concept of a
plural society which gains strength through diversity or whether we are to have bitter fragmentation that
will result in perpetual tension and strife.
- Justice Earl Warren
What the country needs are a few labor - making inventions.
- Arnold Glasow
If we let idiots like the Black Panthers survive under our form of government, maybe we'll
have to change it.
- Frank Rizzo
Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to
give his sons the hardships that made him rich.
- Robert Frost
Americans: People who laugh at ... African witch doctors and spend 100 million dollars on
fake reducing systems.
- Leonard Louis Levinson
America is a land where a citizen will cross the ocean to
fight for democracy - and won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
- Bill Vaughan
America is much more than a geographical fact. It is a political and moral fact - the first
community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human
equality.
- Adlai Stevenson
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
-Thomas Jefferson
Lisa, if you don't like your job you don't strike. You just go in
every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way.
- Homer Simpson