America Quotes - Page 19

• From early Colonial days, sex life in America had been based on the custom of men supporting women. That situation reached its heyday in the Twenties when it was easy for any dabbler in stocks to flaunt his manhood by lavishing an unearned income on girls. But with the stock-market crash, men were hard put even to keep their wives, let alone spend money on sex outside the home. The adjustment was much easier on women than on men, who jumped out of windows in droves, whereas I can't recall a single headline that read: KEPT GIRL LEAPS FROM LOVE NEST.

  Anita Loos

  Girl, Sex, Home

  Anita Loos (1974). “Kiss Hollywood good-by”, Viking Adult

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• Americans still believe they are cut out to be successful-in everything: love, love-making, luck, luck-giving, money-making, sense-making, cancer-avoiding, clothes-wearing, car-driving, and so on.

  William Saroyan

  Cancer, Believe, Cutting

  William Saroyan (1968). “I used to believe I had forever, now I'm not so sure”

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• He who wishes to maintain that the past of mankind no longer has any absolute value in lifemust also be ready to deny his ownlife until the present moment, indeed in advance until the last moment, as worthless. He who realizes that culture is the giving of form will also see that the highest forms that it is given to the human spirit to recognize have always been, psychologically considered, such evasions from the present. Considerations such as these do not at all square with the direction of America's mind.

  Johan Huizinga

  Past, Squares, History

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• If the Americans, in addition to the eagle and the Stars and Stripes and the more unofficial symbols of bison, moose and Indian, should ever need another emblem, one which is friendly and pleasant, then I think they should choose the grapefruit. Or rather the half grapefruit, for this fruit only comes in halves, I believe. Practically speaking, it is always yellow, always just as fresh and well served. And it always comes at the same, still hopeful hour of the morning.

  Johan Huizinga

  Morning, Stars, Believe

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• Most thoughtful Americans of today seem to have forgotten how strongly their own and immediate predecessors, Emerson, Hawthorne and Whitman, were still preoccupied with the essence behind things.

  Johan Huizinga

  Thoughtful, Essence, Today

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• Under weak government, in a wide, thinly populated country, in the struggle against the raw natural environment and with the freeplay of economic forces, unified social groups become the transmitters of culture.

  Johan Huizinga

  Country, Struggle, Government

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• It is my duty to prevent, through the independence of Cuba, the U.S.A. from spreading over the West Indies and falling with addedweight upon other lands of Our America. All I have done up to now and shall do hereafter is to that end.... I know the Monster, because I have lived in its lair--and my weapon is only the slingshot of David.

  Jose Marti

  Fall, West Indies, Land

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• There clearly are cases where evil people exist, but you don't have to violate the privacy of every single citizen of America to find them.

  Eric Schmidt

  Leadership, Evil People, Democracy

  "Google: NSA spying on data centers is ‘outrageous’". www.foxnews.com. November 4, 2013.

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• Made no mistake: America is a Christian nation. The bedrock of our theo-democracy is our Judeo-Christian values. that term, by the way, is a bit of a misnomer. It implies that Christianity and Judaism are equal.

  Stephen Colbert

  Christian, Mistake, Religion

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• Girls face two major sexual issues in America in the 1990s: One is an old issue of coming to terms with their own sexuality, defining a sexual self, making sexual choices and learning to enjoy sex. The other issue concerns the dangers girls face of being sexually assaulted. By late adolescence, most girls today either have been traumatized or know girls who have. They are fearful of males even as they are trying to develop intimate relations with them.

  Mary Pipher

  Girl, Sex, Self

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• Despite whatever agreement there may be between some of us, let us never forget that we are all working whole-heartedly and humbly for the same goal-a country of peace, abundance and prosperity-for all of our people of all races, of all groups-whoever they may be, wherever they may live.

  Chester Bowles

  Country, Race, Agreement

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• Only America makes you feel that everybody wants to be like you. That's what success is: Everybody wants to be like you.

  Ornette Coleman

  Want, Like You, Feels

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• The East is the hearthside of America. Like any home, therefore, it has the defects of its virtues. Because it is a long-lived-inhouse, it bursts its seams, is inconvenient, needs constant refurbishing. And some of the family resources have been spent. To attain the privacy that grown-up people find so desirable, Easterners live a harder life than people elsewhere. Today it is we and not the frontiersman who must be rugged to survive.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Home, Heart, Long

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• The feminization of America has made emotions sacrosanct while condemning as cold and unfeeling rigorous concepts such as duty andhonor. Propelled by incessant hosannas to woman's "finer" this and "softer" that, we make emotional decisions instead of ethical ones and then congratulate ourselves for having "heart.

  Florence King

  Heart, Emotional, Decision

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• Real feminism is spinsterhood. It's time America admitted that old maids give all women a good name.

  Florence King

  Real, Women, Names

  Florence King (1990). “Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye”, p.47, Macmillan

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• One of life's intriguing paradoxes is that hierarchical social order makes cheap rents and outré artists' colonies possible. Raffish bohemian neighborhoods flourished in the days of racial segregation; under integration the artistic poor have no safe places in which to create.... If America lacks a vigorous culture it is partly because studios and ateliers have become crack houses.

  Florence King

  Artist, Order, House

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• By sending the contradictory message that the famous are just plain folks on Mount Olympus, America has forged a relentless tension between loftiness and accessibility. Stir in the fact that the inborn talent and intelligence needed to achieve fame are immune to distributive tinkering by government programs and you have a definition of fame certain to produce envious rage: somebody screwed democracy.

  Florence King

  Equality, Government, Envy

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• There are so many different kinds of people in America, with so many different boiling points, that we don't know how to fight with each other. The set piece that shapes and contains quarrels in homogeneous countries does not exist here. The Frenchman is an expert on the precise gradations of espèce de and the Italian knows exactly when to introduce the subject of his other's grave, but no American can be sure how or when another will react, so we zap each other with friendliness to neutralize potentially dangerous situations.

  Florence King

  Country, Fighting, Italian

  Florence King (1990). “Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye”, p.83, Macmillan

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• Hereditary monarchy offers numerous advantages for America. It is the only form of government able to unify a heterogeneous people. Thanks to centuries of dynastic marriage, the family tree of every royal house is an ethnic grab bag with something for everybody. We need this badly; America is the only country in the world where you can suffer culture shock without leaving home. We can't go on much longer depending upon disasters like Pearl Harbor and the Iranian hostage-taking to "bring us together.

  Florence King

  Country, Home, Government

  Florence King (1990). “Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye”, p.125, Macmillan

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• In colonial America, the father was the primary parent. . . . Over the past two hundred years, each generation of fathers has hadless authority than the last. . . . Masculinity ceased to be defined in terms of domestic involvement, skills at fathering and husbanding, but began to be defined in terms of making money. Men had to leave home to work. They stopped doing all the things they used to do.

  Frank Pittman

  Father, Home, Past

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• When people ask if the United States can afford to place on trial the president, if the system can stand impeachment, my answer is, "Can we stand anything else?

  George McGovern

  Adversity, Men, People

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• The treasures of Cathay were never found.
  In this America, this wilderness
  Where the axe echoes with a lonely sound,
  The generations labor to possess
  And grave by grave we civilize the ground.

  Louis Simpson

  Lonely, Echoes, Discovery

  Louis Simpson (2003). “The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems, 1940-2001”, p.124, BOA Editions, Ltd.

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• From the American newspapers you'd think America was populated solely by naked women and cinema stars.

  Nancy Astor

  Stars, Thinking, Naked

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• No one in this country has any root anywhere; we don't live in America, we board here, we are like spiders that run over the surface of the water.

  Van Wyck Brooks

  Running, Country, Roots

  Van Wyck Brooks (1961). “From the Shadow of the Mountain: My Post-meridian Years”, New York : E.P. Dutton

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• Our country was born out of a desire to be free. And every day since, it's been protected by our men and women in uniform - people who believed so deeply in America, they were willing to give their lives for it.

  Barack Obama

  Leadership, Country, Father

  FaceBook post by Barack Obama from May 24, 2014

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