Popular quotes about Americans! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 54
When you talk about Social Security, it's not just enough to say, we're looking at you, this really matters. It's the fact that a million Americans think it matters. Oh, wait, it's 2 million Americans think it matters. No, it's 4 million Americans. It's 6 million, wait, it's 10 million, it's 50 million Americans who care about this. That's how we're going to make change.
Elizabeth WarrenAlmost 60,000 average Americans had the courage to go out and charge those beaches on Normandy, to drop out of airplanes who knows where, and take on the battle for freedom. Average Americans, the very Americans that our government now and this president does not trust to make a decision on your health care plan. Those Americans risked everything so they could make that decision on their health care plan.
Rick SantorumIt seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans.
Eric HobsbawmIf we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green... If we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don't deserve to survive, and probably won't.
William FaulknerEnvironmentalists are a socialist group of individuals that are the tool of the Democrat Party. I'm proud to say that they are my enemy. They are not Americans, never have been Americans, never will be Americans.
Don YoungAmericans will gladly support their president when he attacks nations that sponsor or harbor terrorists. We will even back him in a preemptive war against a country that might attack us. But when we start sending troops around the world to stabilize nations that, if left to disintegrate, might become breeding grounds for terror, it's a step too far for most Americans.
Dick MorrisI hear all the time that 'unemployment is greatly reduced, but the people aren't feeling it.' When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth - the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real - then we will quit wondering why Americans aren't 'feeling' something that doesn't remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class.
Jim CliftonLiberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets, because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots and announce - yes, announce - that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by... liberals.
George WillLook at the chaos of European history. Europeans cannot believe in certainty. But Americans believe in certainty. Americans think this can go on like this forever. Just as it is. No change.
Carl AndreYou know, I have never seen the level of anger and frustration and resentment and even disgust among millions of Americans toward the media. And I think there are a lot of self-inflicted wounds here, big mistakes that are not learned from, but also a lot of it the byproduct of a campaign in which the press appeared to be out of touch with the frustration of the many millions of Americans who helped put Donald Trump into the White House and just the way we botched it.
Howard KurtzEventually, Americans would be stuck with government-run health care whether they like it or not. That's when the worst scenario would take shape, with Americans subjected to bureaucratic hassles, hours spent on hold waiting for a government service rep to take a call, restrictions on care, and, yes, lifesaving treatment and lifesaving surgeries denied or delayed.
Mitch McConnellMost Americans don't know about environmental problems, because we have in our country a negligent and indolent press. The biggest lie that the right wing holds in our country is that there is such a thing as a liberal media. Americans are getting their news from the right-wing media.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.The freedom of thought and action we Americans enjoy today seems as natural as the air we breathe. But there is a danger we may take this freedom for granted. We must never forget it was bought for us at a great price. The brave and resourceful Americans whose sacrifices gained our Independence and preserved it for more than 200 years against formidable foes have set an example of unflinching loyalty to the ideal of liberty and justice for all.
Ronald ReaganIt may be changing, but still it's the one place, that total control of an institution, that African Americans have. So sometimes, you know, you'll hear the statement of African Americans saying, "I have to work with whites.
Michael EmersonI don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?
Joni MitchellGovernment isn't a good way to solve problems ... [G]overnment is concerned mostly with self-perpetuation and is subject to fantastic ideas about its own capabilities. ... [G]overnment is wasteful of the nation's resources, immune to common sense and subject to pressure from every half-organized bouquet of assholes. ... [G]overnment is distrustful of and disrespectful toward average Americans while being easily gulled by Americans with money, influence or fame.
P. J. O'RourkeThe Iraqis have a country that inherited cultures thousands of years old while the Americans have a culture only two hundred years old. Two hundred years will teach thousands of years!? Oh Americans, leave Iraq for its people.
Yusuf al-QaradawiWe are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions... and shall rise and fall with Americans.
Frederick DouglassColor categories are on steroids in Latin America. I find that fascinating. It's very difficult for Americans, particularly African-Americans to understand or sympathize with.
Henry Louis GatesI think there are profound differences between the civil rights struggle for African Americans and the civil rights struggle for gay Americans.
Christopher RiceAmericans are fickle. And what constitutes the enemy is always changing. Believe it or not, at one time Blacks were the favored model minority over Asian Americans.
Ishmael ReedIf Trump doesn`t respect all Americans, how can we trust him to serve all Americans?
Hillary ClintonThe task that has fallen to us as Americans is to move the conscience of the world, to keep alive the hope and dream of freedom. For if we fail or falter, there'll be no place for the world's oppressed to flee to. This is not a role we sought. We preach no manifest destiny. But like the Americans who brought a new nation into the world 200 years ago, history has asked much of us in our time. Much we've already given; much more we must be prepared to give.
Ronald ReaganSimply put, ObamaCare cost Americans jobs through uncertainty and now implementation threatens even more jobs. No wonder the majority of Americans continue to oppose it.
Pete SessionsIndeed, I think most Americans now know that in 1935 when Social Security was created, there were some 42 Americans working for every American collecting retirement benefits.
John ShadeggMy deal is have a flat, simple tax. And - Americans want - Americans I hope - aspire to be - be wealthy. I hope they aspire to have a better quality of life. And we have this class warfare that's going on now. And I don't agree with that. I'm interested in people getting to work.
Rick Perryit is only on posters and in advertisement pages that Americans have those chubby cheeks, expanding smiles, smooth looks, and faces flushed with well-being. In fact, almost all are at odds with themselves; drink offers a remedy for this inner malady of which boredom is the most usual sign: as drinking is accepted by society, it does not appear as a sign of their [Americans'] inability to adapt themselves; it is rather the adapted form of inadaptability.
Simone de BeauvoirMy personal missteps - how many Americans have died as a result of that? None. Other than my family, how many victims were there? None. And yet, in refusing to engage in a responsible debate about Iraq, how many Americans died? Thousands. And America seems to have no problem with that.
Scott RitterAll the struggles that were fought for here in the United States for African Americans, you now enjoy the privileges of. You now come here and can enjoy privileges that were fought for by African Americans over several generations.
Danai GuriraIt used to be that the working class, broadly speaking - Americans who worked with their hands, who worked in factories, who were not in management - were an interest group, a political interest group. And their main spokespersons were the Democrats. Their platform was the Democratic Party. And that began to change after the 1960s. Not for black or other working class Americans, but for white working class.
George PackerAlthough both my grandfathers encountered ethnic prejudice, they viewed this as an aberration-a failure of some Americans to live up to the nation's ideals. It did not dawn on them to blame the bad behavior of some Americans on America itself.
Robert P. GeorgeIn terms of my own plans, I anticipate supporting one of the three, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or John Kasich as our nominee. If they don't become the nominee, then I'm probably going to go to the voting booth and find someone else who's running as a conservative or perhaps just write in the name of someone I believe should become the president of the United States, who I could be proud of and who I believe is interested in balancing the budget, keeping America safe with a strong military, and is not willing to disparage fellow Americans, Mexican-Americans, Muslims, and so forth.
Mitt RomneyI'm comparing Americans to international peers in terms of GDP, educational system - the sort of benchmarks we used to designate a so-called developed society. In that sense, we are outliers. Are we suckers? Yes, but it's not just that. That puts too fine a point on what I am saying. We're not idiots and victims. It's about us as a people, compared with, say, Canadians, believing whatever we believe because, well, we're Americans, we feel this way without regard for what scholars and scientists say.
Kurt AndersenAmericans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.
Richard M. NixonI'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.
Ronald ReaganOne of the ongoing crises in America is institutional racism. We have a very broken criminal justice system. We live in a country where there are more people in jail than any other country on Earth. There are some 2.2 million people currently incarcerated and they are disproportionally African American and Hispanic. Unarmed African Americans have been abused and sometimes killed while in police custody. Clearly these are issues that must be dealt with and changed.
Bernie SandersWhen there are starving people in the world, it seems wrong that so many of us Americans eat as much for entertainment as for nourishment.
Andy RooneyWell, Americans expect our president to be human beings, and as imperfect as all of us are. They expect us to make mistakes and all that. But one thing the American public likes is, if you make a mistake, you do that, you cross that line that they expect you to behave under, then you apologize or then you correct that behavior and said you have learned, you are going to do better, you are going to achieve better, and you are going to serve a higher purpose than that.
Matthew DowdWhen I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers.
Kareem Abdul-JabbarMost Americans take their freedom very seriously, but they don't realize that not everyone is free.
Johnathon SchaechHumor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards, and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.
Garrison KeillorI would remind my countrymen, that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour. No matter how valuable law may be to protect your property, even to keep soul and body together, if it do not keep you and humanity together.
Henry David ThoreauThe top 400 people own more wealth now than the bottom 185 million Americans taken together. That is a medieval structure.
Gar AlperovitzTo Americans Boris Vian has long been one of the hidden glories of French literature. In I Spit on Your Graves, he wrote an utterly untypical work, a blast from his Id that may well have killed him. Even now, with misogyny disguised as racial justice, its venom remains potent and disturbing, in equal parts appalling and riveting. It is a singular book, not for the squeamish, and not to be passed by.
Jim KrusoeI imagine that all Americans have a unique relationship in their individual present to their collective past and how that relationship might shape their identities and experiences.
Steve CossonI'm one of 23 million Americans in recovery who have gone on to live productive lives.
Michael BotticelliI have often asked Americans wherein they consider their freedom superior to that of the English, but have never found them able to indicate a single point in which the individual is worse off in England as regards his private civil rights or his general liberty of doing and thinking as he pleases. They generally turn the discussion to social equality, the existence of a monarchy and hereditary titles and so forth - matters which are, of course, quite different from freedom in its proper sense.
James Bryce