Quotes on American

You didn't have to read 'Playboy,' visit the mansion, wear pajamas, or even be straight: The effects of its ideas about women on the American psyche were totalizing. Women were inferior to men because, for 'Playboy,' they were scenery - pretty, passive, usually white, often blonde, there.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans - because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or a hearing.

I think there's a growing courage among the younger generation of American writers. Because of the more superficial treatment of characters taking place in cinema, they have had to deal with that by digging deeper into who these people are.

I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.'

The whole period of the '60s changed a lot of us; there was never a decade like that in American history... to have the decade capture one of the great accomplishments of this century: man landing on the moon.

American tax dollars spent on education are meant to support students, not support aggressive, deceptive, and misleading marketing campaigns by certain for-profit education companies.

In the long run, we will need many more African-American, Latino, and Native American leaders, and leaders from low-income communities, who can bring additional insight and a deeply grounded sense of urgency, and who are the most likely to inspire the necessary trust and engagement among students' parents and community leaders.

With 'Arrested Development,' we tried showing the deep disdain that connects a family. We wanted to hold up a mirror to American society. And, just as predicted, America looked away.

I think the attraction of 'American Idol' is about the basic human nature attitude that is, 'We can put you up there. But we can take you down.'

Today's average American is more apt to rebel against a tennis shoe not coming in the right color than against the slow erosion of our democratic freedom.

African American patriotic heroism is always a curious spectacle. Often white political observers and politicians will praise Black people for their bravery, privately in awe of a people who continue to risk their lives for a country that will still barely let them vote.

With women composing nearly half the American workforce and increasingly serving as the primary breadwinner for families, we can't afford to treat pregnant women differently than their counterparts, especially when slight job modifications could help them stay in the workforce at no risk to their health.

I believe that the real difference in the American church is not between conservatives and liberals, fundamentalists and charismatics, nor between Republicans and Democrats. The real difference is between the aware and the unaware.

The time has come to repeal 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' It is the right thing to do. Every American should have the opportunity to serve their country, regardless of race, sex, creed, or sexual orientation.

What are the symbols of American strength, wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll, not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It's their skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology.

The scenarios of biological or chemical warfare painted in detail by the American media during the months after September 11 only betray the inability of the government to determine the magnitude of the danger.

I think it's not an accident that you don't have that many Asian American women writers who are breaking out. I don't think it's an accident that you don't have that many Asian American writers, either women or men. I don't think that immigrants are encouraged to become artists. That's very gendered and racialized and ethnicized.

The American society around me looked at me and saw Japanese. Then, when I was 19, I went to Japan for the first time. And suddenly - what a shock - I realized I wasn't Japanese; they saw me as American. It was an enormous relief. Now I just appreciate being exactly in the middle.

Boycotts have been a critical part of social justice in American history, particularly for African-Americans.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. and coalition partners stands as one of the greatest blunders in American history. The Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, rose out of the the chaos, throwing the region into turmoil that hasn't been equaled since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.