Top 1200 American Character Quotes & Sayings - Page 16

I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread.

Trump's first statement as president, his inaugural address, was an unprecedented assault on American democracy and American values.

I'm Mexican-American, but for a long time I was pushed out of any references to Mexican-American writers. It was easier to come out as a gay man than it was to come out as a Mexican-American.

When you become a citizen, you are an American and questioning somebody's Americanness because they disagree with you - is about one of the most un-American things I can think of.

I was born in England - though both of my parents are American - and there's something about the 'Muppets' where they have this combination of English and American humor.

Making a film of a work you've played for six weeks gives you intimate knowledge of the character. By the time you go in front of the camera you've worked out the behavior and life of a character.

The American taxpayers are a powerful force. They don't want their taxes raised. Obama and the Democrats have a fight with the American people, not with me.

The Villain wasn't necessarily something I sat down and thought, 'Oh this is going to be my character.' It's most like other great wrestling characters, where it's more of a reflection of my actual character.

I knew nothing of American History because I didn't pay attention to American History in school. Because I did not see myself in American History in school.

It was seriously just a name. They didn’t tell you what to do. They didn’t tell you how they wanted the character to be - nothing. You went in to audition for this character name and that was it. When I started, before I came onto the set, I went to Gene Roddenberry and said: hey, what do you want from this guy? Who is he? And being as smart as he is, he said: don’t listen to what you’ve heard or read or seen in the past, nothing. Just make the character your own. And that’s what I did.

Genealogy of American Finance is a treasure trove of information on American banking and its history, in an unusual -- and unusually useful -- format.

People will talk about character arcs, but you look at the character arc of C-3PO from 'Star Wars' to 'Return of the Jedi,' and it's a complete 180... he's not so much of a coward and a fussbudget.

The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.

The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This idea has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that it is virtually forbidden - as an unpatriotic act - that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood

Every movie I work with the costume designer to see what feels like the character, not what Columbus would wear but what is right for the character. Outside of the armored truck standard issue security guard uniform, this guy is trying to make ends meet. He might have one pair of jeans, the same boot, maybe changes his shirt but he doesn't have a walk-in closet full of things, so I wanted something comfortable that felt like the character.

I'm very pro-American - my entire family escaped poverty in Italy because they rightly believed in the American dream.

Every American deserves a shot at the American dream.

In North America, what happens often is that they put race before nationhood. Everyone here is Hispanic-American, Chinese-American, African-American. But really, we're just North Americans of all these different descents. The only time I notice North Americans becoming national is when a war happens or a crisis happens.

Not disown my past or upbringing, but I'd admired American actors, really American movie star - particularly the rebel heroes of the '50s.

I've said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!

I'm not willing to commit American taxpayers' money anymore or American troops on the ground in another Middle Eastern country.

It's not Brits who think American readers are a bunch of whinging morons with the geo-social understanding of a wire coathanger, it's American editors.

I can honestly say Ive never thought for a second about whether a character reflects poorly on any group. All that matters to me is that the character is true to my belief in who he or she is.

I try to look at every role the same way, regardless of whether the character is real or the character is a fantasy. I always start from myself, because you have to know yourself first.

You have to be completely in the character, and that's so hard to do. That's why, when they call, 'Cut!,' you often feel yourself shift. Unless you're Daniel Day Lewis, who stays in character all the time, there's a switch that happens.

I doubt that I could create a character I loathed simply because when a character takes life, it is impossible not to be a little amazed by the phenomenon, and to find that the amazement has something of the quality of delight.

My central focus is what are we doing to protect the American people and the American homeland? Afghanistan and Pakistan are critical elements in that process.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of things American - but when American people do British stuff, it's so universally dreadful.

Those who take their money abroad in an effort to avoid paying American taxes should lose their American citizenship.

Harvey Weinstein does not personify American liberalism any more than Bill O'Reilly personifies American conservatism.

People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American.

American politicians who dwell on American exceptionalism only dishonor us by suggesting we play dumb to our past.

I have an American passport, but I don't always remember I'm an American citizen.

Yes, we become stronger when black and whites, Latino, Asian American, Native American, when all of us stand together.

We have directed the closure of P.R.C. Consulate General Houston, in order to protect American intellectual property and American's private information.

German women love American men. That's why a lot of American servicemen go to Germany - and never come back.

A lot of these so-called left positions are actually centrist by the standards of the American people, just not by members of the American Congress.

Be thankful that sometimes God lets you struggle for a long time before that answer comes. Your character will grow; your faith will increase. There is a relationship between these two: the greater your faith, the stronger your character, and increased character enhances your ability to exercise even greater faith.

There is nothing antithetical in American history, culture, or traditions to teamwork. Teams were important in America's history - wagon trains conquered the West, men working together on the assembly line in American industry conquered the world, a successful national strategy and a lot of teamwork put an American on the moon first (and thus fare, last). But American mythology extols only the individual...In America, halls of fame exist for almost every conceivable activity, but nowhere do Americans raise monuments in praise of teamwork.

But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace withoutgrandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,--which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.

Occasionally, I've been asked to do American roles, and once or twice I have, but I don't understand Americans. I don't have any real feeling for American culture.

American prosperity and American free enterprise are both highly unusual in the world, and we should not overlook the possibility that the two are connected.

My every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families.

My approach to Pennywise was, on one hand, I wanted to stay true to the essence of the character but at the same time make it an edgier character that is basically unpredictable and people won't expect everything he comes up with.

You know, I always got offered other stuff. Not the romantic leads, obviously. But very often it's a role that's underwritten, where the character has no personality at all. And they need a character actor who can fill it in.

I can't negotiate and collaborate with a character to create a distilled dramatic investigation of the raw material. I need to work with an actor. That stuff about actors who stay in character all the time is nonsense.

I do always feel very proud and flattered by being asked to be a part of American productions playing American characters.

Can anything be more Un-American than the Un-American committee?

I've never felt more American than I did when I moved to England. It becomes a real kind of part of your identity: "Oh, Ben. He's the American guy." I think when you say you're from New York you get a different reception then if you just say, "I'm American." So I'd always kind of make sure I was a New Yorker first.

Growing up as an Asian American, we're lucky to have two sentences in a history book about the Chinese-American experience.

There's the fact that American fiction is basically the most apolitical fiction on the globe. A South American writer wouldn't dare think of writing a novel if it didn't allude to the system into which these people are orchestrated - or an Eastern European writer, or a Russian writer, or a Chinese writer. Only American writers are able to imagine that the government and the corporations - all of it - seem to have no effect whatsoever.

As a historian of American and African-American religion, I know that the Trayvon Martin moment is just one moment in a history of racism in America that, in large part, has its underpinnings in Christianity and its history. Those of us who teach American Religion have a responsibility to tell all of the story, not just the nice touchy-feely parts.

American leagues - baseball, ice hockey, American football and basketball - you are the best. But in a global sport like soccer, you're not.

Because of our peculiar electoral law, the American government is divided between two parties. The American people are not.

Voters in 1960 elected the first Catholic president. In 2012, I voted to reelect the first African American president. Each was a vote for a man of principle and character, for a man who had proved himself capable and courageous and who would lead our country with a combination of dignity, compassion and toughness along a path of progress.

Whether a character in your novel is full of choler, bile, phlegm, blood or plain old buffalo chips, the fire of life is in there, too, as long as that character lives.

American teachers have one indisputable advantage over foreign ones; they understand the American temperament and can judge its unevenness, its lights and its shadows.

I'm an actor. I'll take a lead if it's offered. The really good actors can fill a character, no matter what the role is. A good leading man is a character actor; a good character actor can be a leading man.

It is important for us to remember that black people have been patriotic and have fought for that American dream in every American war.

Character is something each one of us must build for himself, out of the laws of God and nature, the examples of others, and - most of all - out of the trials and errors of daily life. Character is the total of thousands of small daily strivings to live up to the best that is in us. Character is the final decision to reject whatever is demeaning to oneself or to others and with confidence and honest to choose the right.