A Quote by William S. Burroughs

The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not.

William S. Burroughs

Quote Topics

American Citizen Class Composite Largely Negatives

Quote Author

William S. Burroughs
American - Writer
February 5, 1914 - August 2, 1997

We are not a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of citizens. I am sick and tired of the American citizen being demeaned and treated as a second-class citizen while anybody who crosses the border is treated as the most virtuous human being on the face of the earth.

Mark Levin

Killing a bunch of people in Sudan and Yemen and Pakistan, it's like, "Who cares - we don't know them." But the current discussion is framed as "When can the President kill an American citizen?" Now in my mind, killing a non-American citizen without due process is just as criminal as killing an American citizen without due process - but whatever gets us to the table to discuss this thing, we're going to take it.

Teju Cole

I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision.

Daniel Ellsberg

I became an American citizen three years ago, and if I'd been arrested, maybe that wouldn't have happened. That was a very proud moment, by the way. I still have my Irish passport, but becoming an American citizen was important in terms of my family.

Jason O'Mara

I'm not an American citizen, but I live in this country and eventually want to become an American citizen because I love this country so much.

Rob Halford

You want to defend citizenship? Don't persecute or isolate those without papers. Just live like a citizen. That'd be a first-class way to be American.

Eric Liu

I use the phrase "fellow citizen" all the time when referring to the - people always say, "The American people, the American people." I prefer the phrase fellow citizen because there's a power in that, there's a responsibility, there's a duty in using that phrase fellow citizen.

Tavis Smiley

I am an American citizen, first class. I don't have a bade that makes me an official good guy like you, but Im work just as honest for a living.

Lucky Luciano

I was taught from a young age that many people would treat me as a second-class citizen because I was African-American and because I was female.

Queen Latifah

I was born in Brazil, I was an American citizen for about 10 years. I thought of myself as a global citizen.

Eduardo Saverin

If you are in this country illegally, stealing a job from an American citizen, I'm going to do all I can to put an American citizen in that job and not somebody that has crossed our border, come into the country and violated our laws.

Virgil Goode

Plot involves fragmentary reality, and it might involve composite reality. Fragmentary reality is the view of the individual. Composite reality is the community or state view. Fragmentary reality is always set against composite reality. Virginia Woolf did this by creating fragmentary monologues and for a while this was all the rage in literature. She was a genius. In the hands of the merely talented it came off like gibberish.

Rita Mae Brown

there is a spirit in every home, a sort of composite spirit composed of the thoughts and feelings of the members of the family as a composite photograph is formed of the features of different individuals.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without trial or hearing. I would like to see the government admit they were wrong and do something about it, so this will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed, or color.