Quotes on American

Young people are constantly absorbing - through media, textbooks, and policy - the myths of American exceptionalism; for black children, this means that what they are taught in class does not match the world that they navigate daily.

Every American has the duty to obey the law and the right to expect that the law will be enforced.

Every American soldier wants as much public support as he can possibly have. That's the soldiers on duty in Iraq, and that's me, as well. We fight better knowing that our people back home support us, back us, and understand what we're doing. It's hugely important.

Oh, I love labels, as long as they are numerous. I'm an American writer. I'm a Nigerian writer. I'm a Nigerian American writer. I'm an African writer. I'm a Yoruba writer. I'm an African American writer.

I don't want to be a race-transcending leader. I want to be deeply understood as a man, as African- American, as a Christian, all that I am.

I'm the one who has made all the sacrifices. Those are my American records, not the country's.

Though I have drawn my sword in the present generous struggle for the rights of men, yet I am not in arms as an American, nor am I in pursuit of riches. My fortune is liberal enough, having no wife nor family, and having lived long enough to know that riches cannot ensure happiness.

For thousands and thousands of American kids, libraries are the only safe place they can find to study, a haven free from the dangers of street or the numbing temptations of television. As schools cut back services, the library looms even more important to countless children.

The Christian church in the U.S. is still strong numerically, but it has lost its decisive influence both in American public life and in American culture as a whole, especially in the major elite institutions of society.

I got interested in the American culture war back in 2004, and it's one of the only growth stocks I've ever invested in.

American government did not originate in any abstract theories about liberty and equality, but in the actual experience gained by generation after generation of English colonists in managing their own political affairs. The Revolution did not make a breach in the continuity of their institutional life.

What matters is that the majority of American people have become complacent in a senseless injustice that occurs all around them. What matters is that most American politicians have become more easily swayed by money than by the people who voted them into office.

That song didn't just happen. It grew out of my experiences. 'American Pie' was part of my process of self-awakening: a mystical trip into my past.

The new American dream is one of responsibility. What is the bottom-line number that you're going to be able to pay back toward a student loan responsibly if you're doing it yourself after you have a job? That dictates the amount of money you can borrow. That dictates the school you can go to, if you can even go to a four-year college at all.

American influence in the world depends on the ability to act with real capacity and set an example that others will want to follow. This all takes resources.

As immigrants, we understand better than most that to be an American is a privilege that conveys not just rights but responsibilities.

I'm not good at finding 'encouraging' features in American culture. I doubt that aesthetic literacy has much of a future here.

The essential relationship across American history between black people and white people is one of exploitation and one of plunder. This is not, you know, necessarily about, you know, whether you're a good person or not or whether you see black people, you know, on the street, and you're willing to shake their hands and be polite.

When people ask what 'American Pie' is about, they're missing the point. The song isn't about the lines themselves - it's about what is between the lines. The song is about what isn't there.

As an American man of the 1990s writing about a Japanese woman of the 1930s, I needed to cross three cultural divides - man to woman, American to Japanese, and present to past.

Everybody who went to Vietnam carries his or her own version of the war. Only 10 percent engaged in combat; the American elephant, pursuing the Vietnamese grasshopper, was extraordinarily heavy with logistical support.