Top 1200 American Television Quotes & Sayings - Page 17

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.

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

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.

American Medical Association [AMA] was strongly opposed to any scheme for group practice and to health insurance ... because they are un-American.

Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.

Every American deserves a shot at the American dream.

People are disappointed when they hear my American accent because they regard 'The Police' as an English band but I've clung to my American-ness all the way.

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.

It's interesting to me because theater is, on any given day, 10,000 times harder than film and television. And that's not to say film or television can't be hard or challenging; it's emotional to do the same thing over and over and over. But in terms of stamina, there is nothing like an eight-show week to separate the men from the boys.

I think what people watch television for is the emotional continuity, from episode to episode, and feeling that the experience that they had, four episodes ago, has actually been building to an episode that comes later, and knowing that the characters are growing, as a result of that, and making mistakes, is really, really important to the way people connect to television.

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

Latin, as we all know, ultimately broke down into Spanish, Italian, French, and so on. One wonders whether there will be an imperial parallel with English breaking down into, shall we say, North American, European, Australian, and so on. On the other hand, there is this immense, inward-driving influence of radio and television that is bringing us all back together. One could say it's a fight between the two: a fight between regionalism and the standardization through communication.

Evidently, there are many great American writers. But sometimes it can feel as though American fiction is dominated by relatively linear narrative form, with a heavy emphasis on psychological realism. If you limit yourself to a certain kind of American literary fiction, it's easy to forget about the different kinds of books that are being written. You can forget to be ambitious, both as a reader and a writer.

The largest untapped constituency in American politics are the 300 million American citizens who have been completely left out of the immigration debate.

My first job was television. I got to where I wanted to go, but through a little bit of a detour. When I first started working in film and television, I hated myself - I didn't like what I was doing at all. All I could think of was, 'I'm overacting. Be smaller.' I started to do that, but that was not fun. I felt confined doing film and TV.

I am an American, not by accident of birth but by choice. I voted with my feet and became an American because I love this country and think it is exceptional.

I think that Apple has revolutionized every other consumer industry; why not television? The complexity of the experience of using the television gets more and more complicated. So it seems exactly the sort of problem that if anyone is going to change the experience of what the first principles are, it is going to be Apple.

Teachers and librarians can be the most effective advocates for diversifying children's and young adult books. When I speak to publishers, they're going to expect me to say that I would love to see more books by Native American authors and African-American authors and Arab-American authors. But when a teacher or librarian says this to publishers, it can have a profound effect.

France loves American cinema because when an American remake is successful, it makes us money to produce more French films.

If Ricky Schroder and Gary Coleman had a fight on television with pool cues, who would win? 1) Ricky Schroder 2) Gary Coleman 3) The television viewing public

It is un-American, it is unjust to target any group of folks whether they are African-American, Hispanic, poor or elderly when it comes to access to the vote.

A youthful American voice isn't particularly challenging - I've been a young American, and they're all around me. I can walk from my house to Barrington High School.

I saw this new thing called television, and I saw people throwing pies in each other's faces, and I thought, 'This could be a wonderful tool for education! Why is it being used this way?' So I said to my parents, 'You know, I don't think I'll go into seminary right away. I think I'll go into television.'

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.

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.

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

The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in Germany or Mexico or Japan.

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

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

I think the American people should know there's already strong influences toward another deployment of American troops in an open-ended commitment.

I always say African American history is the quintessential American story. It's about perseverance and resilience - something everyone can relate to.

I have heard earnest American sociologists say that American children have a right to the divorce experience as an enriching element of an advanced civilisation.

Some of the greatest reality television we ever had was the moon landings. When you think about it, that was human emotion and people, unscripted, working with each other - and millions and millions of people around the world, glued to their television sets to share real-time in a brand new, fascinating human experience.

It's important to address young people in the reopening of New Orleans. In rebuilding, let's revisit the potential of American democracy and American glory.

California must be all American or all Chinese. We are resolved that it shall be American, and are prepared to make it so. May we not rely upon your sympathy and assistance?

A trillion dollars spent, 2,000 American lives lost - Afghanistan is the longest war in American history. But you don't hear a word about it.

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.

All of a sudden, making a Spanish-American War joke. I think you sort of had to go to probably to an American high school to have remembered that.

We will rebuild our country with American workers, American iron, American aluminum, American steel. We will create millions of new jobs and make millions of American dreams come true. Our infrastructure will again be the best in the world. We used to have the greatest infrastructure anywhere in the world, and today, we are like a third-world country. We are literally like a third-world country. Our infrastructure will again be the best, and we will restore the pride in our communities, our nation.

The power of the American system of republicanism lies in its capacity to allow religious belief to be a competing, not a controlling, factor in American life.

I must say it's pretty dreary living in the American Age - unless you're an American of course. Perhaps all our children will be Americans.

The death tax punishes the American dream - making it virtually impossible for the average American family to build wealth across generations.

This is going to be a very transparent Justice Department. But I'm not gonna sacrifice the safety of the American people or our ability to protect the American homeland.

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

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.

If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain, do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?

The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas.

If I have my way, I want to go start making really interactive television. Stuff where you can sit and watch real actors do a real series and they can get into some kind of gun battle and all of a sudden your television prompts you to pick up your controller and all of a sudden, you're playing a first-person shooter.

Before I did any television or film, I did years and years of theater. Television and film stuff, even though it went on for a good, healthy number of years, almost felt like a diversion from theater.

I've been a Republican since age 13, when we got our first television set, and I saw the Republican National Convention on television. And President Eisenhower was talking about personal responsibility, about opening the door for opportunity and that people could really take care of themselves without a lot of government intrusions.

Jazz music is as American as it gets, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. A Miles Davis stamp is a perfect marriage of two great American institutions.

I think it's only in a crisis that Americans see other people. It has to be an American crisis, of course. If two countries fight that do not supply the Americans with some precious commodity, then the education of the public does not take place. But when the dictator falls, when the oil is threatened, then you turn on the television and they tell you where the country is, what the language is, how to pronounce the names of the leaders, what the religion is all about, and maybe you can cut out recipes in the newspaper of Persian dishes.

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

Great American art needs the idea of uninterrupted spaces, like a loft, which itself is something very American.

This obsession with leadership... It's not neutral; it's American, this idea of the heroic leader who comes in on a white horse to save the day. I think it's killing American companies.

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

One of the differences between real documentaries and reality television, besides the artificial construct of reality television, is that the people who are recruited to be on those shows, and the people who are interested in going on those shows, basically want to be famous. Or maybe they can win a million dollars or something.

A British director directed 'American Beauty,' an important film about American life, and it didn't matter. What only mattered was everyone's sensibility.

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.

If you are on television, that one night that someone is able to see you, you're talking about millions of people in one day. That's pretty awesome because then it helps you to jumpstart your career, and if you're the one to go out there and perform, people are going to come see you because those millions saw you on the television.