Quotes on America

The colonial period has been the proving ground in America for the new social history, which concentrates on the ordinary doings of ordinary people rather than on high culture and high politics. Unfortunately ordinary people, almost by definition, leave behind only faint traces of their existence.

As a child, I lived through and survived the segregated South. I sat at the back of the bus at a time when America wasn't yet as great as it could be.

America wins when the voiceless have a seat at the table, when the vulnerable are protected, and when working families have the same political clout as the wealthy.

I just couldn't believe that the police would fire tear gas into what had been a peaceful protest. I was running around, face burning, and nothing I saw looked like America to me.

I would dream. I focused all my attention on going to America. The subculture, James Dean, the rock n' roll, the beat writers.

I feel George Wallace symbolizes something in the past which America has rejected.

Everyone who's in America spends the first few years not experiencing it. The person is frightened by the newness of the place and doesn't see things. Her emotional universe becomes the entire universe. And then when she thinks of home, her distance in space can seem like a distance in time.

I don't feel uncomfortable in America, but every once in a while, I'm reminded that people don't see me the way I see me. It doesn't change my life, but it gives me a consciousness about it.

The burdens of generations of poverty and powerlessness lie heavy in the fields of America. If we fail, there are those who will see violence as the shortcut to change.

The good news is when we are in full-on sisterhood, women are the most powerful, political force in America.

African-Americans don't need handouts and donations; we can hire ourselves if white corporate America does business with us in a fair and equitable way.

Although I was always very happy in Britain, I never stopped thinking of America as home, in the fundamental sense of the term. It was where I came from, what I really understood, the base against which all else was measured.

In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body - it is heritage.

'White America' is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies.

If you are attempting to study American history, and you don't understand the force of white supremacy, you fundamentally misunderstand America.

We have this idea in our minds that there's this separation of church and state in America, which I think is a good thing. And we extend that to our politics - not just church and state, but it's also there's a separation of religion and politics. But of course there isn't.

To be black and an intellectual in America is to live in a box. On the box is a label, not of my own choosing.

I think that every minority in the United States of America knows everything about the dominant culture. From the time you can think, you are bombarded with images from TV, film, magazines, newspapers.

I grew up black in segregated America, where it was hard to find an open door. It's harder now for young blacks to find a closed one.

You know, there is a long tradition in the U.S. of, um, promoting elections up to the point that you get an outcome you don't like. Look at Latin America in the Cold War.

I'd argue that in the last few decades in America, when people are asked what they hope the future will look like, they still turn to 'Star Trek.' They hope we put aside our differences and come together as humanity, that we rise above war, poverty, racism, and other problems that have beset us.