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The administration says the American people want tax cuts. Well, duh. The American people also want drive-through nickel beer night. The American people want to lose weight by eating ice cream. The American people love the Home Shopping Network because it's commercial-free.
Will DurstThe white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.
Maya AngelouIf one asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him: It means all that the Constitution of our people, organizing for justice, for liberty, and for happiness, meant. Our flag carries American ideas, American history and American feelings. This American flag was the safeguard of liberty. It was an ordinance of liberty by the people, for the people. That it meant, that it means, and, by the blessing of God, that it shall mean to the end of time!
Henry Ward BeecherDoes people not asking me about Asian American literature mean they don't see it as its own literary tradition? I certainly believe in it as its own literary tradition, because your race plays a great factor in how you are seen by the world, and how you see the world; the fact that I'm an Asian American isn't incidental to who I am as a writer. Where it becomes difficult is defining what, if anything identifiable at all, makes an Asian American book an Asian American book, other than the fact of its creator being Asian. And I'd argue that there is nothing identifiable beyond that.
Hanya YanagiharaPresident Reagan always gave the credit to the American people and American ideals. He treated his job as a valuable temporary loan from the American people, a loan that should be respected and returned with dutiful appreciation.
Bill JenkinsI think that as a Christian, we're to be a light in this world. I think it's almost like saying "Christian American," it doesn't mean that I'm not American, it just means that I'm distinctly and authentically Christian as much as I am American.
LeCraeIf the 1,990-page House Health Care Bill becomes law, the average American will receive worse health care, American physicians will decline in status and income, American medical innovation will dramatically slow down and pharmaceutical discoveries will decline in number and quality. And, of course, the economy of the United States will deteriorate, perhaps permanently.
Dennis PragerEven some of us who make movies underestimate their influence abroad. American movies sell American culture. Foreigners want to see American movies. But that's also why so many foreign governments and groups object to them.
Irwin WinklerSomebody had tipped the American continent like a pinball machine and all the goofballs had come rolling to LA in the southwest corner. I cried for all of us. There was no end to the American sadness and the American madness. Someday we'll all start laughing and roll on the ground when we realize how funny it's been.
Jack KerouacWhen the president talks about tax reform, he talks about the people who will benefit. He talks about American jobs. He talks about the fact that we're going to be taking money that's overseas and bringing it back to the United States so that it will employ American workers. I think that focus again on the American working and middle class is- is-is to me the most thoughtful and, in some ways, the most genius part of Trump's approach to politics.
James VanceThe 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
James A. BaldwinMy initial fear was that Trump would be something in the order of an American fascist, be militaristic and aggressive. My take on it after the first 100 days is that he's dangerous in a different way. Fascists are dangerous because they're competent people. Trump is incompetent. My fear is not just as an American Muslim, although that's part of it, but as an American who believes very strongly in the idea of a pluralistic, cosmopolitan, transatlantic Western identity. What he's doing to the West and the United States, I don't think the U.S. can recover from this.
Haroon MoghulI'm accountable - this sounds emo - to black American writing, Southern writing, Southern black American writing, American writing and my people. That's kind of what keeps me accountable.
Kiese LaymonAs Claude LeLouche said, his favorite American director is Sergio Leone. Not because I would be American, but because I was dealing with subject matter that an American could have just as easily dealt with.
Sergio LeoneWhen 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.
Mike RoykoWe've heard so much about the American dream: well, Trump is the American nightmare made flesh. All the things about 'the ugly American' that we worry about and which the Americans see in themselves, it's all of that. This is a politics of egotistical display.
Billy BraggWe believe one magnificent highway of this kind [the Lincoln Highway], in actual existence, will stimulate as nothing else could the building of enduring highways everywhere that will not only be a credit to the American people but that will also mean much to American agriculture and American commerce.
Carl G. FisherIf 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.
Wilton Daniel GregoryWe are developing in the United States a huge underclass of unwanted people, many of them the descendants of the exploitation of the South American and Latin American countries by American piratical capitalism. Not all capitalism is piratical, but some of it certainly is. And we have a fantastic gap beginning to exist between rich and poor.
Benedict GroeschelKilling a bunch of people in Sudan and Yemen and Pakistan, it's like, "Who cares - we don't know them." But the current discussion is framed as "When can the President kill an American citizen?" Now in my mind, killing a non-American citizen without due process is just as criminal as killing an American citizen without due process - but whatever gets us to the table to discuss this thing, we're going to take it.
Teju ColeThe American mood, perhaps even the American character, has changed. There are few manifestations any longer of the old American self-assurance which so irritated Dickens. Instead, there is a sense of frustration so perceptible that even our politicians have attempted to exploit it.
Archibald MacLeishIn comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despitethe fact that the American Revolution was successful--realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime--while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.
Irving KristolThis is a nation of immigrants. We welcome people coming to this country as immigrants. My dad was born in Mexico of American parents; Ann's dad was born in Wales and is a first-generation American. We welcome legal immigrants into this country.
Mitt RomneyDecades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African American and Latino workers. We are going to have an immigration system that works, but one that works for the American people.
Donald TrumpLet's just do what is right for the American people. And those of us who are involved in politics and government know that our responsibility is to the American people, that we have a responsibility to find our common ground, to seek it and to find it.
Nancy PelosiAmerican teachers have one indisputable advantage over foreign ones; they understand the American temperament and can judge its unevenness, its lights and its shadows.
John Philip SousaWe Jews have put issue upon issue to the American people. Then we promote both sides of the issue as confusion reigns. With their eye's fixed on the issues, they fail to see who is behind every scene. We Jews toy with the American public as a cat toys with a mouse.
Harold Wallace RosenthalI do believe that freedom isn't free - but today the corporate and political right wing is trying to cheapen this truly American value. They've been cynically using the word 'freedom' to rally the American public against its own best interests.
Richard TrumkaThere are a lot of Chinese-American designers and Chinese designers who have had an impact a little bit on the American market, but I think it's going to be interesting to watch if, over time, somebody can emerge from China who is based in China, and whether they come and show in Paris, like Rei Kawakubo or Yohji Yamamoto did.
Cathy HorynIt is each American's constitutional right to marry the person they love, no matter what state they inhabit. No state should decide who can marry and who cannot. Thanks to the tireless work of so many, someday soon this discrimination will end and every American will be able to enjoy their equal right to marriage.
Brad PittI find a difference in British spy fiction and American spy fiction. In the American version, it's more militaristic, partly because the CIA has more of the military makeup. Whereas MI6 is more of a cerebral, intelligence-based, relationship-based service, i.e., all they do is recruit people to get information out of them.
Charles CummingIt is imperative that young white men and women study the black American history. It is imperative that blacks and whites study the Asian American history.
Maya AngelouAmerican sports are quite masculine. And football - although it's still played by men all over the world - football compared to American football is quite feminine in its artistry. And there's no padding. It's America's loss, though.
Noel GallagherThe quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth... the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us.
Susan SontagThe American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities - he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites.
Malcolm XRace is a core reality of American experience. Media images on television need to reflect that reality to help people who consume media and who don't have the day-to-day, face-to-face contact with others, or where that contact is minimal, to help them have a greater appreciation of other experiences and how they're all part of the American fabric.
Darnell M. HuntI don't see how any African-American, with any inkling of history, can say that you don't have the right to live your life how you want to live your life. No one should be telling you who you should love, no one should be telling you who you should be spending the rest of your life with. When we start talking about equality, and everybody being treated equally, I don't want to know an African-American who will say everybody doesn't deserve equality.
Michael IrvinAmerican actors who voice animated movies are so brilliant at it, because by the nature of American speak, it's full of energy and full of commitment. And as a British actor, we have to kind of learn that.
Helen MirrenIn my first class at the University of Kentucky, my American Literature professor came in, and the first sentence out of his mouth was "The central theme of American Literature is an attempt to reconcile what we've done to the New World." wrote that down in my notebook, and thought, "What is he talking about?" But that's what I think about now. The New World and what we've done to it.
Sam AbellI do not hesitate one second to state clearly and unmistakably: I belong to the American resistance movement which fights against American imperialism, just as the resistance movement fought against Hitler.
Paul RobesonPart of American leadership is making sure that we're doing nation building here at home. That will help us maintain the kind of American leadership that we need.
Barack ObamaMy father grew up in an era when to be an American - a white American, at least - was to be yourself. In some respects, his generation was more ignorant, complacent, self-centered and parochial than mine.
William T. VollmannI think that James Baldwin is, for sure, one of the most important American writer/thinkers of his time... not just African-American. He singled-handily revolutionized the political, artistic and historical discourses about America. He created his particular and original language.
Raoul PeckI mean you look back at American history and American culture, it's pretty striking. I mean this has been the safest country in the world forever, and the most frightened country in the world.
Noam ChomskyThe American Dream is one of the greatest ideas in the history of human achievement . . . It thrives today in an age when its core components of freedom and opportunity are open to more Americans than ever before. It holds a real, identifiable place in the American heart and mind, and it informs the aspirations of everyone from farmers to software developers, from detectives to bankers, from soldiers to social workers . . . It defines us as a people, even as we add to its meaning with each new chapter in our national experience and our individual actions.
Dan RatherJack Kerouac seems to have been preoccupied with the question of duality from a very young age. He seemed to feel that there was more than one person inside him. Indeed he would veer from friendly, open and so on to someone who was angry. In a way, there was a swing also between his American self and what he later called his Franco-American older brother. There was a swing between the deeply introverted part of himself and the person he became out in the world, having to act in an extroverted way.
Joyce JohnsonI believe the American people are more concerned with a man's views and abilities than with the church to which he belongs. I believe the founding fathers meant it when they provided in Article VI of the Constitution that there should be no religious test for public office. And I believe that the American people mean to adhere to those principles today.
John F. KennedyPresident Obama stands ready to work with everyone, because that's what the American people expect and deserve - not for the short term political advantages, but the long term health of our country. We don't spend time trying to figure out what's in the minds of Republicans, we try to keep our focus on the American people.
Valerie Jarrett