Top 1200 Great American Quotes & Sayings - Page 17

The English tourist in American literature wants above all things something different from what he has at home. For this reason the one American writer whom the English whole-heartedly admire is Walt Whitman. There, you will hear them say, is the real American undisguised. In the whole of English literature there is no figure which resembles his - among all our poetry none in the least comparable to Leaves of Grass

Borat shows American stereotypes of Eastern Europe but it's an accurate depiction of what a certain type of American is. They think they can buy and sell these girls and then they get bought and sold.

Recently I donated money to the establishment of the Muhammad Ali Foundation in Louisville. I regard that as a kind of payback. He smoothed the way for us. He wasn?t just a great person who had conviction, but made the sport of boxing great. He was the first superstar, he made our stock rise. Without him we wouldn?t have earned so much. Americans from every walk of life have contributed to the foundation: Bill Clinton, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt. Unfortunately I was the only American athlete to make a donation. There?s not enough respect in our business.

The atomic weapons race and the secrecy surrounding it crushed American democracy. It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality.

I'll always be American in my world view and allegiance. American in the naive way I go to other countries and tell them how they should treat their poor or clean their water.

I had a great time investigating the pigments of different mutant fruit flies by following experimental protocols published in Scientific American, and I also remember making my own beetle collection when it was still acceptable to make such collections.

I'm not one of these people who say how much better American drama is than English. I find it mostly too American, except for The Sopranos, which I think is the best thing.

Mostly every form of American music is dead. It's been dead. R&B isn't really good. You got a handful of great guys - Ne-Yo, R. Kelly, Usher. You have a handful of great female artists. But for the most part the music world's changing and change is good. You have to make adjustments if you want to survive in that world. You start to thinking about creative moments - bliss. When everything was all good. You realize that in comparison to the way hip-hop started off, where we should be at right now is not there.

And the American people should be made aware of the trend toward the monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power in fewer and fewer hands.

A peculiarity of the American historical sensibility allows us to be proud of great-grandfathers (or even grandfathers) who lived in crushing poverty, while the poverty of a father is too close for comfort.

I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.

We have seen numerous instances in which American businesses have brought in foreign skilled workers after having laid off skilled American workers, simply because they can get the foreign workers more cheaply. It has become a major means of circumventing the costs of paying skilled American workers or the costs of training them.

It has long been a dream of mine that this important story one day would be told on the great American stage of Broadway. In fact, I've dedicated much of the latter half of my life to ensuring the story of the internment is known.

Mrs. James, my fifth-grade teacher, introduced us to some of the great literature of African American culture. I won my first blue ribbon reciting the vernacular poems of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, in particular "Little Brown Baby."

American Idol' has done a great job of defaming my name and throwing a lot of mud at me for the past two years, so that set up a lot of roadblocks for me.

What the Founding Fathers created in the Constitution is the most magnificent government on the face of the Earth, and the reason is this: because it was intended to preserve the American society and the American spirit, not to transform it or destroy it.

Reading it now for the seventh or eighth time, I am more convinced than ever not merely that The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s masterwork but that it is the American masterwork, the finest work of fiction by any of this country’s writers.

'American Idol' has done a great job of defaming my name and throwing a lot of mud at me for the past two years, so that set up a lot of roadblocks for me.

I think one can live in American society with a certain cultural heritage, whether it's an African heritage or other, European,what have you, and still absorb a great deal of this culture. There is always cultural assimilation.

No American is prepared to attend his own funeral without the services of highly skilled cosmeticians. Part of the American dream, after all, is to live long and die young.

As I've written more, and as other Indian American voices have grown around me, I strive harder to find experiences that are unique yet a meaningful and resonant part of the American story.

I'm not promoting myself as the next great American driver, as some people are describing me. If that's what people want to call me, fine. But I've got more important things to focus on.

We, the American people, owe the nation's police officers our deepest gratitude, our best efforts, and our strong support, for they have done so much for us against such great odds.

In 1940, President Roosevelt called on American industry to become the 'great arsenal of democracy.' Automotive manufacturers in Michigan responded and converted their assembly lines from cars to tanks and helped America win World War II.

I think when you have so many people working for American-based think tanks and American-based defense companies, there is always going to be a bent towards proposing American-led solutions for foreign problems. People get paid big money in Washington to come up with ways that America can fix problems overseas, and they are not always right.

The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think.

I'm from a Lebanese-American family. And I've been had lot of contacts and - with Arab-American community, especially Arab-American filmmakers and actors and so forth. It's a community that, a minority that really hasn't been heard from enough. And so many of the stories that are told about Arab-Americans these days are just negative portrayals in the news, but also in television and film. So we're - we set out to try and offset some of those stereotypes.

As soon as an American man loves a girl he wants to marry her. This is not only a blunder but it is rather absurd. It is so typical of American men, always wanting to do the noble thing.

As a patriotic American, I am reluctant to leave my post as director of the National Economic Council because I feel a duty to fulfil my commitment to work on behalf of the American people.

I am an American. I love my country and have great hopes for it. It is for this reason that I speak candidly and sometimes critically about it. I have benefited greatly from the freedom that exists in my country and for this I am eternally grateful.

I think it's what animates our president-elect [Donald Trump] more than anything else, is a belief in the boundless potential of every American to live the American dream.

For more than 220 years - from the 1620s to the 1840s - most American schooling was independent of government control, subsidy, and influence. From this educational freedom the American Republic was born.

There were tensions between these two organizations [Organization of Afro-American Unity and N.O.I.] , and Malcolm had to negotiate between them and since he was out of the country a great deal of the time, it was rather difficult for him to do so.

It'd be nice to claim that the American press, while maintaining objectivity and balancing against bias, is still inherently American - that they are patriots who love this country even as they report on its defects.

I grew up in the American South and came of age in the 1960s, an incredibly turbulent time. It was as if the seams of American life were being ripped apart with riots and protests.

I am an American. I love my country and have great hopes for it. It is for this reason that I speak candidly and sometimes critically about it. I have benefited greatly from the freedom that exists in my country, and for this, I am eternally grateful.

I wish I was a great writer or a great journalist or a great scientist or a great artist; I'm not.

We believe that every single child has boundless promise, no matter who they are, where they come from, or how much money their parents have. We've got to remember that. We believe that each of these young people is a vital part of the great American story.

If those who voice opposition to Pope Francis and the direction in which he is leading the church come from other nations but their statements are published on American media platforms, it may appear that they originate in this country or reflect our sentiments. We have our own dissident voices to be sure, but too frequently every challenging voice that criticizes the Holy Father and is broadcast on American media is identified as American in origin.

By protecting our Afghan friends from reprisals and welcoming them into our American family, we can assert that the United States is still a great and good country - and that we do not abandon those who risked their lives to serve with us.

I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly functionless capacity. We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any rewards or punishments in an Afterlife.

Building new connections is a critical part of building a new economy. The American education system, as flawed as it is, is great for the creative class because of the way it mixes up networks.

There are a lot of things that American fans don't know about me yet! I would say they don't know me at all, but I guess that's great because now I have the chance to surprise them and make friends.

Your grandparents came of age in the Great Depression, when everyday life was about deprivation and sacrifice, when the economic conditions of the time were so grave and so unrelenting it would have been easy enough for the American dream to fade away.

An American champion, obviously being here in the states, is something that we all look at with the U.S. Open. But golf is played all over the world, and there are so many great golfers from other countries, and we're lucky enough that this is our home base to be able to play out of.

I have a well-balanced show. It's 50/50 on men/women, and also African-American/white writers, it's the same thing. I have four African-American writers, and four non-African-American writers.

I am an undiluted admirer of American values and the American dream and I believe they will continue to inspire not just the people of the United States but millions across the face of the globe.

It hit me that an Apache resistance would be a wonderful, you know, it would be a wonderful metaphor for Jewish-American soldiers to be using behind enemy lines against the Nazis because the Apache Indians... were able to fight off for decades both the Spaniards and the Mexicans and the U.S. Cavalry for years because of their - they were great guerrilla fighters. They were great resistance fighters. And one of their ways of winning battles was psychological battles.

He only is great at heart who floods the world with a great affection. He only is great of mind who stirs the world with great thoughts. He only is great of will who does something to shape the world to a great career. And he is greatest who does the most of all these things and does them best.

This is so like the way the Americans deliberately erroneously refer to Afghans and Iraqis as terrorists when they fight back killing American soldiers to protect their young from the illegal American invasion.

Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens and moral precepts.

With my mother, Julie Andrews Edwards, I've authored such children's books as the 'Dumpy the Dump Truck' series, 'Dragon: Hound of Honor,' 'The Great American Mousical,' 'Simeon's Gift' and 'Thanks to You: Wisdom from Mother and Child.'

I'm a Democrat because I want every American to have a fair shot at the American Dream. That's what ties it all together for me, and in my experience, that means recognizing that no one is dealing with life one 'issue' at a time.

The Christian church in the U.S. is still strong numerically, but it has lost its decisive influence both in American public life and in American culture as a whole, especially in the major elite institutions of society.

As someone who spent a lot of years living in Jerusalem, one of the great perks is that when you come back, and you get into these Israel arguments in your American-Jewish clan, you can really just silence them by saying, 'I lived there.' So we used it like a bludgeon.

It's a very American thing that everything has to be a business. Americans think... I like America, or I would not be here. There are great qualities to this country. But this sense that everything has to be a business is sometimes overwhelming.

The American people need to be aware of how the Chinese Communist Party is coming after us, not just with missiles and military might, but with plans to subdue the American spirit.

From where many of us in the U.K. sit, American politics is hopelessly polarized. All kinds of issues get bundled up into two great heaps. The rest of the world, today and across the centuries, simply doesn't see things in this horribly oversimplified way.

One of the things that makes this so topical right now is that I think there are an awful lot of American men - and women, but I'm a man, so that's what I can talk about - who feel the American dream has let them down.

The great American denial riff is that you can do whatever you like and you always triumph at the end. The world is saying no, you can do what you like, but there are consequences. And maturity is to be able to turn to the consequences and accept them.