No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
NOBLEMAN, n. Nature's provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life. - Ambrose Bierce
I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of. - Dashiell Hammett
Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the American eagle, it observes only the rear end of an ostrich. - Ambrose Bierce
In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning. - A. E. Housman
I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life. - Warren Buffett
Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour - we're more like celery as a flavour. - Mike Myers
The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office. - Will Rogers
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. - H. L. Mencken
REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian. - Ambrose Bierce
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. - John F. Kennedy
The great omission in American life is solitude. . . that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incinerator of the spirit. - Marya Mannes
I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions. - George Carlin
The writer Richard Manning has argued that 'the most destructive force in the American West is its commanding views, because they foster the illusion that we command. - Phillip Connors
The women of the South have brought into American literature a unique mixture of domesticity and grotesquerie. - James Dickey
American can do better, and help is on the way. - John Kerry
The American wage earner and the American housewife are a lot better economists than most economists care to admit. They know that a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. - Gerald R. Ford
So the American government lied to the Native Americans for many, many years, and then President Clinton lied about a relationship, and everyone was surprised! A little naïve, I feel! - Eddie Izzard
Being an American is about having the right to be who you are. Sometimes that doesn't happen. - Herb Ritts
Contemporary American children, if they are old enough to grasp the concept of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December 15th. - Roy Blount Jr.
Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half. - Gore Vidal
George W. Bush is the worst President in all of American history. - Helen Thomas
American liberals today are hesitant to speak out against the denial of rights that is perpetrated in the name of Islam. - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ego depletion comes from American psychologist Roy Baumeister, who believes that enduring something stressful exhausts our capacity for willpower to the extent that we give in to our temptations that we would rather avoid. - Bruce Hood
YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMNYANK.) - Ambrose Bierce
I am not an American who "will cut the cloth of my conscience to fit this year's fashions."
You've been told that you're broken, that you're damaged goods and should be labeled victims. I don't buy it. The truth, instead, is that you are the only folks with the skills, determination, and values to ensure American dominance in this chaotic world. - James Mattis
DELEGATION, n. In American politics, an article of merchandise that comes in sets. - Ambrose Bierce
The American Dream was freedom, not prosperity. Prosperity killed the American Dream. - Marty Rubin
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. - William O. Douglas
The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill. - Peter Ustinov
Those born in the poorest quarter of American society have an 8% chance of earning a college degree. Those born in the wealthiest quarter of American society have a 75% chance of earning a college degree. - David Brooks
Sci-fi doesn't show me much about alien's nature but shows a lot about North American nature. - Robin Sacredfire
Mideast Christians have few allies in American politics: they are too foreign for the Right and too Christian for the Left. - Mark Movsesian
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. - H. L. Mencken
Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father. - Gloria Steinem
CONSUL, n. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure and office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country. - Ambrose Bierce
For four centuries now, the American people have resigned themselves to natural disasters and acts of God: floods, prairie fires, blizzards, tornados, hurricanes, dust bowls, epidemics, academics, lawyers, and politicians. - Markham Shaw Pyle
For any business decision, there are only two choices: action or inaction. The best option is to take action." - , consultants, iSixSigmaKaizen . In Quality Quotes, February 25, 2015, Knowledge Center, ASQ [ AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR QUALITY] - Ramesh Lohia and Jack T. Parker
The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution. - Benjamin Rush
It's a sad day for American Capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over central park. - Jim Moran
Our American professors like their literature clear, cold, pure and very dead. - Sinclair Lewis
This love of money is the curse of American, and for the sake of it men will sell honor and honesty, till we don't know whom to trust, and it is only a genius like Agassiz who dares to say, 'I cannot waste my time in getting rich,'" said Mrs. Jessie sadly. - Louisa May Alcott
I shall know but one country. The ends I aim at shall be my country, my God & Truth. I was born an American; I live an American; I shall die an American. - Daniel Webster
said that Michael Jackson's memorial service was a variety show with a coffin, that MJ transformed himself through surgery and perhaps female hormones from a brown-skinned African American male to a chalk-faced androgynous ghoul with no clear sexual identity. - Chris Hedges
In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes American what it is. - Gertrude Stein
...am so deeply impressed with the fair mindedness and tolerance of the American people... - Virchand Gandhi
The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes. - George Bernard Shaw
In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate. - Toni Morrison
In general, it’s not too hard to corrupt an American, mostly a matter of supply to their demand. Supply should be variegated to encourage the Illusion of Choice. Other than that they’re looking for numbness, so be ready to sedate. Drugs, booze, television, shopping, etc… - Geoffrey Wood Grimrack An Infernal Epistolary
We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world. - Dan Quayle
According to the standards of the Nuremburg Trials, every American president since World War II could be convicted as a war criminal and hung. - Noam Chomsky
President is a curious term for the American head of state, because "presiding" in any meaningful sense is the one thing the president of the United States does not do. - Garrett Epps
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world. - Herman Melville
I am loving before I am patriotic: I am human before I am American.
In many ways, the title American is an oxymoron because one may look it on the outside but not feel it on the inside. - Ciore Taylor
It is precisely democracy which is destroying the American political structure, American law, and the American economy. - Rose Wilder Lane
Isn't it amazing that, historically, the "Prince of Peace" has most often been introduced to new cultures through extreme violence? European and American colonialists bring this disparity to light in a way that makes me wish that forced conversion didn't work so extraordinarily well. - David G. McAfee
I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens. - Dwight D. Eisenhower
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress. - Mark Twain
The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered... deeply, ...finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. - George Washington
American consumers benefit from disparity & exploitation. I benefit from disparity & exploitation & so does my family. there is no way to be a consumer in this country without causing pain" --casey gray - author of Discount - & my New HERO - Casey Gray
The statement ‘There is nothing more American than an Indian’ happens to be a multidimensional paradox. Try and not say too many of those. That might open your mind to ideas that could cause sanity point loss. - Charles Slagle
Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew's Passion' on a ukulele. - Bagdikian's Observation
When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the American flag.
Ever wonder why the media never refers to 18 or 19 year old American soldiers as "armed teens"? - Stefan Molyneux
I consider myself an American African because we did not come by choice. - Alafia Stewart
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. - Martin Luther King Jr.
In matters of good-lookingness, we writers are the ugliest of the bunch, and normally our appearance is akin to that of someone investigating a crime scene; though the women in American writing keep producing world-class beauty in droves, and there are many breathtaking writers among them. - Pat Conroy
The American people are free to do exactly what they are told. - Ward Churchill
I work hard to stay cynical enough! I keep my expectations of our culture and our leaders low, low, low, and I do it so I don't have to be let down. And yet again I am lowballed by the brokenness of the American cultural machine. - Vinnie Tesla
Where are they, the American fiction writers whose works are interested in the question What do these people have to do with us? and What are we doing out there in the world? - Kamila Shamsie
TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n. An African insect (_Glossina morsitans_) whose bite is commonly regarded as nature's most efficacious remedy for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American novelist (_Mendax interminabilis_). - Ambrose Bierce
The 100% American is 99% an idiot. - George Bernard Shaw
Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
REAR, n. In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress. - Ambrose Bierce
What is the American fetish about highways?They want to get somewhere, LaBas offers.Because something is after them, Black Herman adds.But what is after them?They are after themselves. They call it destiny. Progress. - Ishmael Reed
...oppression is as American as apple pie... - Audre Lorde
You're just another american who is willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick being shoved up your asshole every day... The owners of this country know the truth... it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it! - George Carlin
The American family shattered for the simple reason that it was American, not global. - John F. MacArthur Jr.
cross-national studies show that the U.S. poverty rate, which stands persistently above 12 percent, is not only the highest poverty rate of any advanced industrial nation, but is more than twice the average for that group.Pursuing the American Dream, 9, 276 - Calvin C. Jillson
I have one of those real old American built cars. The kind that just PUNCHES through accidents.
That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it. - George Carlin
American diversity rarely applies to money and success. - Suzanne Munshower
There is a homely old adage which runs: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." If the American nation will speak softly, and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far. - Theodore Roosevelt
I do not know the American gentleman, god forgive me for putting two such words together. - Charles Dickens
An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means.There is no such thing in the country. - George Bernard Shaw
If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy. - Marquis De Lafayette
As an American, I'd like to apologize-for everything. - Rich Hall
One may lack words to express the impact of beauty but no one who has felt it remains untouched. It is renewal, enlargement, intensification. The parks preserve it permanently in the inheritance of the American citizens. - Bernard DeVoto
I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit. - Theodore Roosevelt
We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists; every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow-citizens, usually by force; the messianic delusion is our national disease. - H.L. Mencken
When Fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in an American flag.
That is the American story. People, just like you, following their passions, determined to meet the times on their own terms. They weren't doing it for the money. Their titles weren't fancy. But they changed the course of history and so can you. - Barack Obama
To all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. - Barack Obama
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr. - Will Rogers
It should surprise no one that modern soldiers return home just as conflicted and detached as previous generations. The difference is that in the age of vapid American decadence, their simpler fundamental values are largely irrelevant to we civilians. - Tiffany Madison
On Kwajalein, Louie and Phil leared a dark truth known to the doomed in Hitler's death camps, the slaves of the American South, and a hundred other generations of betrayed people. Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. - Laura Hillenbrand
Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. - Malcolm X
Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. - Hunter S. Thompson
American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it. - Glenn Greenwald
The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly. - John F. Kennedy
If you think that American Capitalism is the most dangerous Institution in the World, it just goes to show, that you haven't partied like there is no tomorrow with the fun loving posse of The Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea, The Taliban, or ISIS. They all party off the hook! - James Hauenstein
I am the penny whistle of American literature. - Nelson Algren
We just can't trust the American people to make those types of choices.... Government has to make those choices for people. - Hillary Rodham Clinton
Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel. - Robert Hughes
Just read The Virtue of Minding Your Own Business. Oh my, what currents run deep! Beautifully seen, beautifully told. Praise praise praise . . . Pardon my French, but you are one darn major American writer!"---, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, on Sandcastle and Other Stories - Richard Bach
The American political system is like fast food--mushy, insipid, made out of disgusting parts of things...and everybody wants some. - P.J. O'Rourke
The notion that a human being should be constantly happy is a uniquely modern, uniquely American, uniquely destructive idea. - Andrew Weil
I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture. - Etta James
Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was belief in facts. - John Gunther
Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings. - George F. Will
The quality of American life must keep pace with the quantity of American goods. This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor. - John F. Kennedy
The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it. - Alexis De Tocqueville
In most American biomes, predators and prey must share the same watering hole." - - Animal Wisdom
Nothing can be more notorious than the calumnies and invectives with which the wisest measures and most virtuous characters of The United States have been pursued and traduced [By American Newspapers] - Thurgood Marshall
I am groping about through this American forest of prejudice and proscription, determined to find some form of civilization where all men will be accepted for what they are worth. - P.B.S. Pinchback
That's part of American greatness, is discrimination. Yes, sir. Inequality, I think, breeds freedom and gives a man opportunity.
American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age. - Marshall McLuhan
I've been asked a lot for my view on American health care. Well, 'it would be a good idea,' to quote Gandhi. - Paul Farmer
Each member of this shadowy network resented the others, who were irritating reminders that nothing was more American, whatever that means, than fleeing the American, whatever that is, and that their soft version of self-imposed exile was just another of late empire's packaged tours. - Ben Lerner
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. - Mark Twain
We can have no "50-50" allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.
The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other going in opposite directions. - George Carlin
They were untouched by modern education, but their government was striving with might and main to procure this inestimable benefit for them; anticlericalism and American bustle would soon free them from belief in miracles and holy likenesses. - Robertson Davies
A recent survey or North American males found 42% were overweight, 34% were critically obese and 8% ate the survey. - Banksy
The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not make. - Dan Quayle
The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions. - George Carlin
Al Qaeda's central political objective is the creation of an Islamic republic, not the progressive realignment of American foreign policy. - Simon Cottee
But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete." (, June 10, 1963, American University speech) - John F. Kennedy
As a friend of mine told me about Real Happiness: you wrote this one in American. - Sharon Salzberg
The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum."(Adlai E. Stevenson, 1900-1965, American Lawyer, Politician) - Adlai E. Stevenson II
These dreamsThese empty dreamsfrom the make-believe bedroomstheir parents left themare the after-effectsof television programsabout the idealwhite american familywith black maidsand latino janitorswho are well trainto make everyoneand their bill collectorslaugh at themand the people they represent - Pedro Pietri
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. - Theodore Roosevelt
The mass production of distraction is now as much a part of the American way of life as the mass production of automobiles. - C. Wright Mills
GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism. - Ambrose Bierce
As long as I am an American citizen and American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject.
Because a superior fried-chicken restaurant is often the institutional extension of a single chicken-obsessed woman, I realize that, like a good secondhand bookstore or a bad South American dictatorship, it is not easily passed down intact. - Calvin Trillin
An HBCU that is not inherently revolutionary in 2016 is irrelevant.An African American Studies class that is not inherently revolutionary in 2016 is irrelevant. - Darnell Lamont Walker
A year earlier my parents had moved us out of the city to a split-level on Long Island, their idea of the American dream, which meant it as now an hour-and-a-half commute via the 7:06 Hicksville to Penn Station every morning. (Dark City Lights) - Jonathan Santlofer
Yes, 1960’s North American sitcoms have led me to study the United States 1920’s and 1930’s crime bosses— QET Jenkins - Kim Welsman
I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music. They just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male. - Kurt Cobain
Getting kicked out of the American Bar Association is like getting kicked out of the Book-of-the-Month-Club.
The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish. - Virgil Thomson
An American Monkey after getting drunk on Brandy would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men. - Charles Darwin
The ability to see the future does not require sight just Vision and Passion to embrace Change for a better American future.-12-05-2013 - Michael E. McKinzy Sr.
If the events of September 11, 2001, have proven anything, it's that the terrorists can attack us, but they can't take away what makes us American -- our freedom, our liberty, our civil rights. No, only Attorney General John Ashcroft can do that. - Jon Stewart
It is our American habit if we find the foundations of our educational structure unsatisfactory to add another story or wing. We find it easier to add a new study or course or kind of school than to recognize existing conditions so as to meet the need. - John Dewey
I can never do justice to the great feeling of amazement and encouragement I felt when, perhaps for the first time in American history, white citizens of a Southern state banded together to come to Selma and show their indignation about the injustices against the African-Americans. - Amelia Boynton Robinson
It is good for a student to be poor. Getting and spending, the typical American college student lays waste his powers. Work and contemplation don't mix, and university days ought to be days of contemplation. - Russell Kirk
The problem is, there is no geographical cure. No matter where we (Black American Folk) go, we are still too plugged into this place. Our cousins, grandmothers, aunts, nieces will be in this place. And the second we start looking at it as a "them" problem, we become another problem. - Darnell Lamont Walker
The fledgling and ragtag American army turned its state into a semi-plausible advantage, encouraging enlistees to wear their own "hunting shirts" to build on the reputation of frontier marksmen. - Joseph J. Ellis
Self-centered indulgence, pride and a lack of shame over sin are now emblems of the American lifestyle. - Billy Graham
Traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time. - John Brockman
... walk in the footprints of his ancestors. This land is a museum of man's ancient history. The American has gone to the moon and found dust, he's going farther away to look for other planets, very good. But know thyself first. That is what I would tell my American friend. - tsegaye gebre medhin
American husbands are the best in the world; no other husbands are so generous to their wives, or can be so easily divorced.
The actual God of many Americans... is simply the current of American life.
The problem that has no name - which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities - is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease. - Betty Friedan
[I]f you think that American imperialism and its globalised, capitalist form is the most dangerous thing in the world, that means you don't think the Islamic Republic of Iran or North Korea or the Taliban is as bad. - Christopher Hitchens
If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.[Commencement Address at American University, June 10 1963] - John F. Kennedy
if we could tax Americans' cognitive dissonance we could balance the budget. The American people want all kinds of incompatible things, they're human beings, and they want high services, low taxes, and an omnipresent, omniprominent welfare state. - George F. Will
The vast majority of Americans, at all coordinates of the economic spectrum, consider themselves middle class; this is a deeply ingrained, distinctly American cognitive dissonance. - Ellen Cushing
PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics. - Ambrose Bierce
TRUST, n. In American politics, a large corporation composed in greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public enemies. - Ambrose Bierce
American foreign policy must be more than the management of crisis. It must have a great and guiding goal: to turn this time of American influence into generations of democratic peace. - George W. Bush
[H]is mouth pursed, but pursed in American, more generous than English pursing, ready for broader vowels and less mincing sounds. His body was long and lean and trim; he had American hips, ready for a neat belt and the faraway ghost of a gunbelt. - A.S. Byatt
All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by the government in less than a second.
I don't believe in the Constitution because I'm American, I'm American because I believe in the Constitution. - J.S.B. Morse
It is always a pride to die as an American. - M.F. Moonzajer
so many people would be afraid to look in the mirror if the saw their character and not their face…it would be like american horror story. - Turcois Ominek
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong. - G.K. Chesterton
If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. - Henry A. Wallace
Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system. - Richard Mitchell
American culture at large has failed working mothers. - Emily Matchar
How can you tell somebody who is pursuing happiness that they're somehow not American when that was the very first promise that America made? - Dan Savage
Though American scenery is destitute of many of those circumstances that give value to the European, still it has features, and glorious ones, unknown to Europe...the most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness - Thomas Cole
WIT, n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out. - Ambrose Bierce
Americans are overreachers; overreaching is the most admirable of the many American excesses. - George F. Will
For the American people are a very generous people and will forgive almost any weakness, with the possible exception of stupidity. - Will Rogers
The collaboration between secretaries of state, election officials and the voting system manufacturers on the matter of enforcing this black box proprietary code secrecy with election systems, is nothing less than the commoditization and monetization of American Democracy - James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology
I don't have a problem with these Arizona laws. I have a problem with Chicano, Gay and Lesbian, Asian-American and African-American histories not being taught in American History courses. - M.G. Hardie
ALIEN, n. An American sovereign in his probationary state. - Ambrose Bierce
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers. - W. Somerset Maugham
I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience. - Shelley Winters
NEGRO, n. The _piece de resistance_ in the American political problem. Representing him by the letter n, the Republicans begin to build their equation thus: "Let n = the white man." This, however, appears to give an unsatisfactory solution. - Ambrose Bierce
You will be my souvenir in American summer,when all I can think about are Parisian springs. - Lori Jenessa Nelson
Anyone in any walk of life who is content with mediocrity is untrue to himself and to American tradition. - George S. Patton Jr.
The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis, the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain. - Roberto Bolaño
Here is a great body of our Jewish citizens from whom have sprung men of genius in every walk of our varied life; men who have conceived of its ideals with singular clearness; and led enterprises with sprit & sagacity... They are not Jews in America, they are American citizens. - Woodrow Wilson
During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice. - Kurt Vonnegut
IF you wish to be a writer then don't wait until you write the "great American novel" for they aren't written they are created. If you don't write at all you won't know how "great" that simple book can be. - Shiree McCarver
Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. - Abraham Lincoln
Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday...The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production. - Ayn Rand
The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself. - John Ciardi
The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. - H. L. Mencken
The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain. - W. Somerset Maugham
What is more important to a library than anything else -- than everything else -- is the fact that it exists."[The Premise Of Meaning, American Scholar; Washington, DC, June 5, 1972] - Archibald MacLeish
MUSTANG, n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society, the American wife of an English nobleman. - Ambrose Bierce
RECOUNT, n. In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded to the player against whom they are loaded. - Ambrose Bierce
As Americans, we want peace -- we work and sacrifice for peace. But there can be no peace if our security depends on the will and whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. I'm not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein. - George W. Bush
The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. - Benjamin Franklin
I ain't got no Visa, I ain't got no Red American Express, We can't go nowhere exotic, It don't matter 'cause I'm decent and Loyal. - Genereux Philip
You can always get truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy or given up hope of the Presidency. - Wendell Phillips
You see a dead enemy soldier and you say, At least it wasn’t one of ours. You see a dead American soldier—one of your own—and you say, At least it wasn’t me. You lose a friend and you say, To hell with this. Get me out of here. - Donald Malarkey
A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true. - Terry Pratchett
Confronted with the choice, the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb.
The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. - Henry David Thoreau
Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax.
I hate American History after 1850. - Emma Iadanza
If happiness truly consisted of physical ease and freedom from care, then the happiest individual would not be either a man or a woman; it would be, I think, an American cow. - William Lyon Phelps
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, right or wrong - is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. - Theodore Roosevelt
In this funny debut, flashy Filipino fashion designer Boy Hernandez sees his American dream become a nightmare when he’s ensnared in a terrorist plot and shipped to Guantanamo. Gilvarry nails the couture scene, but Boy’s rough journey from Manolo to Gitmo is no joke. - Andrew Abrahams
Remember the generational battles twenty years ago? Remember all the screaming at the dinner table about haircuts, getting jobs and the American dream? Well, our parents won. They're out living the American dream on some damned golf course in Vero Beach, and we're stuck with the jobs and haircuts. - P. J. O'Rourke
Don't get the idea the I'm knocking the American system. - Al Capone
A venturesome minority will always be eager to get off on their own... let them take risks, for Godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches- that is the right and privilege of any free American.
With the single exception of the American Revolution, the aftermath of all revolutions from 1789 on only worsened the human condition. - Arnold Beichman
Doesn't it seem more reasonable to take action to heal the social pathology that generates crime than to use gun control to blow another political toe off American liberalism during each election cycle? - Joe Bageant
And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights -- the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation – the right to breathe air as nature provided it -- the right of future generations to a healthy existence?" (, June 10, 1963, American University speech) - John F. Kennedy
That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans. A European says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with me?" An American says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?" - Terry Pratchett
Just because I like to suck cock doesn't make me any less American than Jesse Helms. - Allen Ginsberg
The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability. - Tom Lehrer
Let us talk sense to the American people. Let us tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains. - Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
The chief business of the American people is business. - Calvin Coolidge
An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before. - Mark Twain
I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. - Thomas Jefferson
The American people are fed up...with political posturing.' True, but also an example of political posturing. - James Taranto
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. - H. L. Mencken
I realized that all my life, my values were based upon typical middle-class American values: hard work, doing good, living well, owning things, following the rules & being the best I can be... but God clearly says, "those are not MY values. I value justice, mercy & humility. - John Green
She's got feet like boats, whiskers like an American, and her undies are filthy. - Marcel Proust
I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic, and a progressive religious experience. - Shelley Winters
I sometimes wonder whether our churches--living as we do in American death-denying culture, relentlessly smiling through our praise choruses--are inadvertently helping people live not as much in hope as in denial. - Mark Galli
REVEILLE, n. A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted. In the American army it is ingeniously called "rev-e-lee," and to that pronunciation our countrymen have pledged their lives, their misfortunes and their sacred dishonor. - Ambrose Bierce
I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American. - Daniel Webster
In this remarkable time for the world, I refuse to believe it's time to stop believing in the possibilities of our remarkable country. I refuse to accept the downsizing of the American Dream. I refuse to bet against American entrepreneurial spirit and American ingenuity. - John Kerry
The Bible Belt is collapsing. The world of nominal, cultural Christianity that took the American dream and added Jesus to it in order to say, 'you can have everything you ever wanted and Heaven too,' is soon to be gone. Good riddance. - Russell D. Moore
All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value. - Carl Sagan
Minnie Spotted Wolf from Butte, Montana, was the first Native American to enlist in the Marine Corps Womens' Reserve. Spotted Wolf joined in 1943. She commented that Marine Corps boot camp was "hard, but not that hard. - Tom Holm
To be an American is to be accosted by bigotry and enmity for the rights that you were told to appreciate. - Tennessee West
FUCK UNITY! FUCK CONSENSUS! There was no unity or consensus during the American Revolution. We had principled leadership from a small, vocal, minority that refused to compromise on the issue of individual liberty. - A.E. Samaan
The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America. - Tim Wise
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money
You don't like your job, you don't strike. You go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way. - Matt Groening
It could probably be show by facts and figures that there is no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress. - Mark Twain
The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through. - Alexis De Tocqueville
The American government is premised on the theory that if the individual man is to be free, his ideas, his beliefs, his ideology, his philosophy, must be placed beyond the reach of government. - William O. Douglas
By 1833 the largest publisher in America, Harper and Company, boasted one horse-powered printing press and seven hand presses while the American Bible Society owned 16 new state-of-the-art, steam-driven presses and 20 hand presses. - Phil Cooke
Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half. - Gore Vidal
This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt from American Honey) - Kellie Elmore
Did you ever stand on a street corner in American at five o'clock in the morning? I did. - Jack Kerouac
I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies, as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together. - Marcus Garvey
Violence is as American as cherry pie - H.R. Schiffman
Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara.O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac - Frank O'Hara
We didn't belong anywhere in particular any more. We were interchangeable parts in the American machine. - Kurt Vonnegut
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. - Will Rogers
RED-SKIN, n. A North American Indian, whose skin is not red -- at least not on the outside. - Ambrose Bierce
And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy businesspeople Get Ahead by using their MacIntosh computers to create the ultimate American business product: a really sharp-looking report. - Dave Barry
There is nothing political about American literature. - Laura Bush
My non American viewers. Who understand that the world does not consist solely of a single nation sailing across an infinite sea of migrant workers. Will no doubt have heard that the waters surrounding Brisbane got tired of waiting for people to hit the beach and decided to bring the party to us. - Yahtzee Croshaw
A person has to ignore the larger social, economic, political, and religious climate of early North American colonialism to advance the Christian nation myth. - David D. Flowers
Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality. — Mother Jones November/December 1997. - Huston Smith
All American cars are basically Chevrolets. - Herb Caen
I think that the Communist Party as a political organization is of no danger to the United States. It has no following and has been disregarded by the American people for many, many years. - Robert F. Kennedy
The traveller must, of course, always be cautious of the overly broad generalisation. But I am an American, and a paucity of data does not stop me from making sweeping, vague, conceptual statements and, if necessary, following these statements up with troops. - George Saunders
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so. - Gore Vidal
Our American values are not luxuries but necessities, not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself. Our common vision of a free and just society is our greatest source of cohesion at home and strength abroad, greater than the bounty of our material blessings. - Jimmy Carter
I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election. - Walt Whitman