A Quote by Peter Beinart

There's nothing wrong with being proud of America, believing that America can do great things. America can do great things, it has done great things. I think we have to have the self-awareness to recognize that the world is a very, very big place, that we could be a force for good things in the world, but we have to have the humility to recognize that sometimes even when we think we're acting from the best of motives our own idealism can be infected by self-interest. Other people in other countries can see it sometimes better than we can.
America was my home for a very long time, and it's a fascinating, pioneering country that many people look to. In the recent past it hasn't been doing very well, but there's a great new hope now with the election of Obama. America took a very big leap there and proved that it still has the edge as far as being able to do things many other countries may find difficult.
We have a lot of great stars and so many different things, some of the other countries don't have that. So when they get somebody, they support them to the death. America, I kind of think we take it for granted sometimes.
America was based on a big promise--a great big one: the Declaration of Independence. When you have to live with that in the house, that's quite a problem--particularly when you've got to make money and get ahead, open world markets, do all the things you have to, raise your children, and so forth. America is stuck with its self-definition put on paper in 1776, and that was just like putting a burr under the metaphysical saddle of America--you see, that saddle's going to jump now and then and it pricks.
A great writer named Neal Stephenson said that America does four things better than any other country in the world: rock music, movies, software and high-speed pizza delivery. All of these are sacred American art forms. Let's return to our purity and our idealism while we have this shot.
I like to bring people together so we don't waste opportunities and resources and keep doing the wrong things when we know better. Corporate America makes great things and things that can hurt us. They have to be part of the solutions. There's nothing to say you don't make a profit by doing good.
It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight.
There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.
Things get very lonely in Washington sometimes. The real voice of the great people of America sometimes sounds faint and distant in that strange city. You hear politics until you wish that both parties were smothered in their own gas.
Government should allow people to go out and do the things Americans have always done, create jobs and prosperity. And America's role in the world - the world is a safer and better place when America is the strongest country in the world.
The challenges facing our country today, I think, have even more even to do with America's place in the world, with a struggling economy that isn't producing the jobs that Americans long to see, with the kind of economic policies that seem to have other countries winning and America losing.
The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passions are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.
[Being judge] is about being honest and giving everybody a fair shot and telling them what you think. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it isn't. It's more important to be honest than say things to make people feel better. I don't think you have to be rude, but I think you have to be honest. But I think it's really important to be specific: Here's what you did that was great and why. And here's what you did that wasn't great and why.
Very little of what America does is actually bad, and I don't think it ever does anything anywhere that is intentionally bad. I mean, sometimes we make mistakes and bad judgments and kind of back the wrong regimes and things, but by and large what America does is really good.
My family had to flee Iran... the revolution, and we were very, very lucky to come to America and have opportunities presented to us. And that's... one of the things that makes America great.
Let's be honest, this is a consumer based economy in America. That's all we manufacture here is need and appetite. We are the world's mouth. They make things in other countries, and they're like, 'Send it to America; they'll eat it.'
I really do think inspiration comes from day-to-day life. I think there's things that pique our interest - not necessarily aha! moments - but things that just kinda make you raise your eyebrows. And those are often the moments that are the seeds of inspiration. Sometimes they're in a great conversation with friends, sometimes they're things you see live, something you read, a movie trailer you watch... I think inspiration is kind of laid out there. One thing we have to practice is recognizing when it happens, and recording that moment so we can come back to it.
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