AMERICA QUOTES II
quotations about America
The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, leeways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen, winning tickets in lotteries. There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media--none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.
HOWARD ZINN
A People's History of the United States
Ordinary Americans, and especially the small minority active in Democrat and Republican primaries, must learn more of what people across the globe are thinking and saying about the US. For if you follow that, you realise that the erosion of American power is happening faster than most of us predicted -- while the politicians in Washington behave like rutting stags with locked antlers.
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
"Americans need to discover how the world sees them", The Guardian, Oct. 15, 2013
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
BARACK OBAMA
Inaugural Address, Jan. 20. 2009
The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter, Dec. 2, 1783
Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and America is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Culture and Anarchy
When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, there was a lot of talk about "The Obama Effect": how the nation's first black president signaled a new era of racial harmony and understanding. That didn't happen. But what did? The Obama family's tenure in the White House has overlapped a revolution in the way Americans deal with identity. From race to religion, from gender to sexual orientation and beyond, marginalized groups that historically worked and waited for "a seat at the table" increasingly demanded their share of cultural power. And people who once assumed that they could define what it means to be American were called on to defend their ideas and "check their privilege."
ALICIA MONTGOMERY
"America Is Obsessed With Identity. Thanks, Obama?", NPR, February 17, 2016
Americans ... still believe in an America where anything's possible -- they just don't think their leaders do.
BARACK OBAMA
fundraising letter, Sep. 1, 2006
My conception of America is a land where men and women may walk in ordered freedom in the independent conduct of their occupations; where they may enjoy the advantages of wealth, not concentrated in the hands of the few but spread through the lives of all; where they build and safeguard their homes, and give to their children the fullest advantages and opportunities of American life; where every man shall be respected in the faith that his conscience and his heart direct him to follow; where a contented and happy people, secure in their liberties, free from poverty and fear, shall have the leisure and impulse to seek a fuller life.
HERBERT HOOVER
speech, Oct. 22, 1928
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue.... Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.
KURT VONNEGUT
Slaughterhouse-Five
Nowhere on the globe do men live so well as in America, or grumble so much.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Many people are discouraged by what they hear and read about America, but the closer they are to the action at home, the better they like what they see.
JAMES FALLOWS
"How America Is Putting Itself Back Together", The Atlantic, March 2016
America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.
NORMAN MAILER
"Advertisement for Games and Ends", Advertisements for Myself
All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us.... Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.
THOMAS KING WHIPPLE
Study Out the Land
The supposedly contending groups who run American society, Democrats and Republicans and Whigs and Democrats and Federalists and anti-Federalists, they really are part of the same elite group.
HOWARD ZINN
Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches, 1963-2009
The American Dream can no more remain static than can the American nation.... We cannot any longer take an old approach to world problems. They aren't the same problems. It isn't the same world. We must not adopt the methods of our ancestors; instead, we must emulate that pioneer quality in our ancestors that made them attempt new methods for a New World.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
Autobiography
This is America ... a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
RNC acceptance speech, August 18, 1988
I'm convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: A better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings. This may not sound too exciting, but there is something magnificent about it. On the farm, on the street corner, in the factory and in the kitchen, millions of us ask nothing more, but certainly nothing less than to live our own lives according to our values -- at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the world.
RONALD REAGAN
televised address, Jul. 6, 1976
[America is] the land where people find whatever they have lost.
GUNTER GRASS
The Tin Drum
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.
JOHN UPDIKE
Problems and Other Stories
America is a country which produces citizens who will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs