Top 1200 Great American Quotes & Sayings - Page 18

The reason the all-American boy prefers beauty over brains is that the all-American boy can see better than he can think.

No doubt, the United States and the American people are a gear country and a great people. Nobody disputes this, but talking about exceptionalism is way too much, and this is creating certain problems in relations, and not only with Russia, as I see it.

From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.

When I conducted a beer-rating session last year, I wrote that most American beers taste as if they were brewed through a horse. That offended many people in the American beer industry, as well as patriots who thought I was being subversive in praising foreign beers. I have just read a little-known study of American beers. So I must apologize to the horse. At least with a horse, we'd know what we're getting.

With the war in Iraq, I had the cooperation of the Department of Defense. Kuwait was pretty eager to get American journalists in there, to show us what a wonderful place they are, and what great allies they are to America, even though they didn't actually fight in the war.

The scarcest resource these days is reason. What's certainly striking about American culture today is the great hostility toward science and the decline of respect for rational scientific thinking. People seem to think that we are ruled by the scientific method and that we overvalue reason. If there was ever a period when we overvalued reason, I think that it was probably extremely brief. What I see now is a great deal of superstition, as much superstition as there has ever been. There are probably more people who believe in guardian angels than who understand the law of gravity.

I think I've got to go back to 'Someone to Watch Over Me.' I think it's a perfectly written song. I really do. I think it's one of the great songs in the American Songbook, and it speaks to love in its simplest and purest form.

If you consider that a typical Central American consumer earns only a small fraction of an average American worker's wages, it becomes clear that CAFTA's true goal is not to the increase U.S. exports.

'American Idol' is a juggernaut... Because of my 'American Idol' win, I am able to do the thing that I love most, which is to be an entertainer.

The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way.

I'm an average American. As I joke, I'm the average Mexican American Jewish Italian mayor of the most diverse city in the world.

When athletes take a knee during the National Anthem, we must ignore President Trump's absurd claim that they're 'un-American' and instead understand that it's very American to peacefully protest systemic injustice.

The 'American Idol' and 'X Factor' shows, they're great shows. But I think I need to make a show like that, directed straight to the hood, to the artists that don't get the attention, that don't have the money to make themselves representable.

The American way is the way most law-abiding Americans live - in debt. Does this make a balanced budget un-American?

Donald Trump has a grand direction. He doesn't have a grand strategy. He wants to re-establish American authority and power and to relaunch the American economy.

[Dean Martin ] had this really wonderful rich, authentic, distinct vocal style. His humour in movies [and] the self-deprecation and the coolness he had could overshadow what a marvellous vocalist in the Great American Songbook he is.

If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.

American films are less American every day, because you have to please a world audience. There's less authenticity, so it's more accessible.

I'm thinking about American votes and American - all Americans, black or white have to be concerned about what's happening in the world.

The American public should know that the Senate report actually reveals that 82% of detainees subjected to enhanced interrogation did, in fact, produce intelligence that saved American lives.

One of the more urp-making habits of media mavens is presuming to speak for the American people, as in 'The American people won't stand for this!'

The British audience was very important to me. I have always looked away from American to non-American audiences and so this was important.

They [American forces] are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend.

I sang 'American Pie' a lot in my stage set. It had a knack of uniting an audience in a sing-along. It's a clever song about American history but wrapped in a fantastic tune.

Caterpillar exported $20 billion of goods in 2011, all by American hands and American workers, to all over the world. In order to do that, we have to create jobs in all those countries that we export to, to be able to sell there.

What we do know is that the planet is going from 7 billion people today to 9 billion. More people want to live like us, drive American- size cars, live in an American-size home, and eat American-size Big Macs. What does that mean? It means that energy demand is going to be going up.

Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina.

It's no great secret, number one, in my view, and I think the view of most Americans, that Congress itself is pretty dysfunctional. We are not addressing the real needs of the American people. And second of all, philosophically, there is a huge division between the House and the Senate.

You may call me selfish if you will, conservative or reactionary, or use any other harsh adjective you see fit to apply, but an American I was born, an American I have remained all my life.

From a German point of view, German-American and European-American relations are a pillar of our foreign policy.

It's definitely a great honor to be the first Asian-American to win a NASCAR Cup Series Championship. It's not something that I set out to accomplish in that way, but now that I have, I know that I hold a much bigger role in the Asian community.

But unless some great revolution in nature modifies the present relative level between land and sea, it may safely be maintained that the present outer reef is the final southern boundary of the North American continent.

The Jews integrated themselves into American life to the point that the argument that the Jews aren't American sounded so stupid, that people stopped thinking it.

The gratification of helping others is a very American tradition and a Judeo-Christian tradition. Now it is great to see young people creating funds and giving back in all sorts of productive ways. It's a terrifically satisfying thing.

The richness of America is that we are diverse. We're not Sweden. We're not Norway. We are a great American experiment. And as soon as we start trying to forget race or turn our back on race, number one, we don't confront the real racial realities that still persist.

General MacArthur told me, "You represent the American serviceman better than the American serviceman himself."

American films are terribly popular all over the world and American movie stars are terribly important. I don't know why.

I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.

I'm actually half Brit and half American. I have a British father and an American mother, but as far as I'm aware, no Middle Eastern blood.

I think the industry finally gets it. They've lost the connection with the American public, and they've got to rebuild the trust with the American public.

'Indian policy' has now been brought down upon the American people, and the American people are the new Indians of the 21st Century.

Every time the Russians throw an American in jail, the Committee throws an American in jail to get even.

Then the American flag was saluted. In general, in the United States people always salute the American flag.

I love rapping. I do. My styling's similar to Missy Elliott - I think she's so dope. In a weird way, that's how I first learned the American accent: doing American rap songs.

American troops and American taxpayers are shouldering a huge burden with no end in sight because Mr. Bush took us to war on false premises and with no plan to win the peace.

More than any other art form I know of in America, country music speaks of the true relationship between the American male and the American female... Terrible and impossible.

Preachers are not sermon makers, but men makers and saint makers, and he only is well-trained for this business who has made himself a man and a saint. It is not great talents nor great learning nor great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God - men always preaching by holy sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it. These can mold a generation for God.

I don't want to come and conquer American films or the American market. I just want to do movies that I care about, stories that I like.

Obviously, we shouldn't be having any American officeholder or any American candidate looking for foreign nations to come in and be involved in U.S. elections.

We need to fight protectionism with everything that we have because when there's a level playing field and when you have open markets and when free trade is flourishing, American workers, American farmers, Americans are going to benefit.

I usually say Latina, Mexican-American or American Mexican, and in certain contexts, Chicana, depending on whether my audience understands the term or not.

The American experiment with representative democracy has been a great success, but we need to realize that it needs to be a genuine representative democracy where ordinary people have a vote, have a voice in choosing the candidates who represent them.

We had the great depression, we had two world wars, we had the flu epidemic. We had oil shock. We had all these terrible things happen. But something about the American system unleashed more and of a potential to human beings over that hundred years so that we had a seven for one improvement in - there's never been any - I mean, you have centuries where if you've got a 1 percent improvement, then it's something. So we've got a great system. And we've got more productive capacity now than we ever have.

My aunts and uncles were like, 'You've got such a great voice - why don't you try out for 'American Idol?'' I'd say, 'Because I'm a songwriter, not a puppet.' Even if I won and became really successful off a show like that, I'd be miserable.

Because in Australia we're so inundated with American culture, television, this that and the other, everyone in Australia can do an American accent. It's just second nature.

Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process.

And check this out: If every American had one meat-free day per week, it would be the same as taking eight million cars off American roads in a year.

The American people don't want Obamacare. It has been forced on the American people, despite the fact that Democrats no longer control the House.

Figure skating has been a great influence for me. I took dance at the School of American Ballet, which helped my own skating. And whether you are a skater or a dancer, without sounding narcissistic, it is all about looking in the mirror.

When I started acting... the community was largely Chinese-American or Japanese-American, so even then I felt like a minority in the minority.