Quotes on America

The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government.

If America has a civic religion, the First Amendment is its central article of faith.

If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can’t imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America’s alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart — and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings.

I have argued for years that we do not have a health care system in America. We have a disease-management system - one that depends on ruinously expensive drugs and surgeries that treat health conditions after they manifest rather than giving our citizens simple diet, lifestyle and therapeutic tools to keep them healthy.

This will arguably be the third great revolution of America, if we can prove that we literally can live without having a dominant European culture.

History has blessed us with all the freedom and advantages of multiculturalism. But it has also blessed us, because of the accident of our origins, with the linguistic unity that brings a critically needed cohesion to a nation as diverse, multiracial and multiethnic as America. Why gratuitously throw away that priceless asset? How mindless to call the desire to retain it 'racist.

Social media has taken over in America to such an extreme that to get my own kids to look back a week in their history is a miracle, let alone 100 years.

Daddy felt that this country was hopeless in its treatment of Negroes. So he became a refugee from America. He bought a house in Polanco, a suburb of Mexico City, and we were planning to move there when he died. I was fourteen at the time.

The citizens of America expect more. They deserve and they want more than a recital of problems.

When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and Smiley shirts. Germany lost the Second World War. Fascism won it. Believe me, my friend.

America is a young country with an old mentality.

Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all of the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.

America, you know, they always separate people because of race. They've been able to convince, 'The niggers are coming.' You know, the diversity that America has is so special. It's starting to really become a cool thing for young people. Not only because there are more mixes of people, but because people are more open-minded about each other. So I think in the future, America has a great, great opportunity, and mostly because of hip-hop.

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.

You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore.

I have found far greater enthusiasm for science in America than here in Britain. There is more enthusiasm for everything in America.

The recognized achievements of some Negroes, despite rigid racial barriers, indicate that society by its prejudices may be depriving itself of valuable contributions from many others. It is now doubtful whether America can afford the luxury of such a waste of human resources.

America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem.

Nature in America has always been suspect, on the defensive, cannibalized by progress. In America, every specimen becomes a relic.