American Life Quotes - Page 2

• When I left the theater… I was thinking that I’d seen a classic of American dance. It confers a mythic dimension on ordinary aspects of our daily lives – it’s unfaked folk art. The dancers, crashing wave upon wave into those falls, have a happy insane spirit that recalls a unique moment in American life – the time we did the school play or we were ready to drown at a swimming meet. The last time most of us were happy in that way.

  Arlene Croce

  Art, Fall, School

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• The most successful people in American life are those that have had horrific failures and have come back, done it again and again until they got it right, whether it's Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.

  Frank Luntz

  Jobs, Successful, People

  "Frank Luntz: How To 'Win' With Smart Messaging". Interview with Neal Conan, www-s4.npr.org. March 8, 2011.

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• I think we're going to care more about Americans than Africans. I don't think that's ever going to go away, and I don't think it's ever going to go away that people care more about their families than strangers, and their communities over other communities. But I think it would transform the world in such a good way if we could just acknowledge, at least intellectually, that an African life and an American life are the same.

  Paul Bloom

  Thinking, People, Community

  "Paul Bloom: The Trouble With Empathy". Interview with Allyson Kirkpatrick, www.guernicamag.com. February 1, 2016.

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• You know, I began my life as a creative person writing true things for magazines and telling some very honest, straightforward personal essaying for This American Life, but until someone forces you, with a deadline, to really observe your life - unless you're motivated to do it yourself - there's so many stories that you miss.

  John Hodgman

  Writing, Creative, Missing

  Interview with Greg Hunter, therumpus.net. October 21, 2013.

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• It's like our go-to notion of innocent and secure mythology of American life. I was always amazed when people would come up to me and say that 'Far from Heaven' was exactly what it was like back then. [laughs] I was so disinterested in what it was 'really like' in the 1950s when I was putting the film together, I was only interested in what it was like in movies.

  Todd Haynes

  People, Laughing, Heaven

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

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• Yes, too much emphasis is put on outward physical attributes in every area of American life.

  Gloria Gaynor

  Too Much, Attributes, Emphasis

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• The individualism of American life, to our glory and despair, creates anger and encourages its release; for when everything is possible, limitations are irksome. When the desires of the self come first, the needs of others are annoying. When we think we deserve it all, reaping only a portion can enrage.

  Carol Tavris

  Thinking, Self, Despair

  Carol Tavris (1989). “Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

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• The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.

  Ida B. Wells

  Running, Home, Men

  Ida B. Wells-Barnett (2014). “On Lynchings”, p.26, Courier Corporation

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• The great scandal of American life is that we pay for German levels of government without enjoying the related benefits.

  Kevin D. Williamson

  Government, Benefits, Levels

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• What I'm OK with is protecting the American people. What I'm OK with is, when people have the intent to come to this country and take American lives, that we are prepared to do what's necessary to gain the information to protect the people of this country.

  Mike Pence

  Country, People, Information

  "The Republican Ticket: Trump and Pence". "60 Minutes" with Lesley Stahl, www.cbsnews.com. July 17, 2016.

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• Enhanced interrogation gleaned information that saved American lives and - I was informed - prevented incoming terrorist attacks on this country from being successful.

  Mike Pence

  Country, Successful, Information

  "The Republican Ticket: Trump and Pence". Interview with Lesley Stahl, www.cbsnews.com. July 17, 2016.

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• If honesty were suddenly introduced into American life, the whole system would collapse.

  George Carlin

  Honesty, Philosophy, Collapse

  "George Carlin: You Are All Diseased". TV Special, www.imdb.com. 1999.

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• An Atlas, whose back is bowed and whose hands are busy holding up the world, has no arms to lift to deal with his own defense. Increase his burdens and you will crush him...This is our present posture...This suggestions I make...would...conserve American lives for American ends.

  Murray Rothbard

  Crush, War, Hands

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• The same tools we need to use to keep this country safe by bringing terrorists to justice, because I guarantee you, if they have the opportunity and the means, they will take American lives.

  Todd Tiahrt

  Country, Mean, Opportunity

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• The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is the fact that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable. ... No nation with any sense of material well-being would endure the food we eat, the cramped apartments we live in, the noise, the traffic, the crowded subways and buses. American life, in large cities, at any rate, is a perpetual assault on the senses and the nerves.

  Mary McCarthy

  Life, Character, Cities

  "On the contrary".

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• Immigration law doesn't exist for the purpose of keeping criminals out. It exists to protect all aspects of American life. The work site, the welfare office, the education system, and everything else.

  Donald Trump

  Law, Office, Criminals

  Donald Trump's Immigration Speech in Phoenix, www.latimes.com. August 31, 2016.

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• There is the issue of security. Countless innocent American lives have been stolen because our politicians have failed in their duty to secure our borders and enforce our laws like they have to be enforced.

  Donald Trump

  Law, Issues, Borders

  "Transcript of Donald Trump's Immigration Speech" by Travis Dove, www.nytimes.com. September 1, 2016.

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• I produced a play in New York that got nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best American Play.The play is called Stalking The Bogeyman. It was a story on This American Life, and my former roommate is the artistic director of the New York Repertory Theater. He heard the NPR show, contacted them, and essentially - shortest synopsis ever, like I'm the Cablevision guide button - it's the true story of a man stalking and plotting to kill the man who raped him when he was seven. It's by a brilliant reporter named David Holthouse.

  Adam Richman

  New York, Men, Awards

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Donald Trump wants to make it clear to the American people that, while Hillary Clinton is committed to open borders, and amnesty, and executive amnesty, and more of the same that has really harmed our economy, and, frankly, as he said, with regard to dangerous individuals in this country, has cost American lives. . . .

  Mike Pence

  Country, People, Amnesty

  "Trump team dodges and ducks". "The Lead with Jake Tapper", www.washingtonpost.com. August 29, 2016.

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• Obama said, 'Now let me be clear, issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam.' No, he said, 'the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life.' So on one hand, 12-year-old girls are stoned to death for the crime of being raped in Muslim countries. But on the other hand, we still don't have enough female firefighters here in America.

  Ann Coulter

  Girl, Country, Struggle

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• Maketa Groves has a strong, bright lyric gift. Her poems come out of music and are full of music. They bring us the sounds of the streets and the sounds of nature, and make us see once again that they are parts of the same song. She celebrates American lives as they are lived today: the mother scrubbing her kitchen floor at midnight, the drag-queens in the Tenderloin, the homeless woman knitting in the courtyard. This is poetry that relentlessly shows us the beauty in the world, with all its struggles and complexity, and demands that we go out to meet it with open hearts.

  Diane di Prima

  Mother, Song, Strong

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• There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration.

  David Foster Wallace

  Frustration, Boredom, Adults

  "Ten Best Commencement Speeches: See A List, Take The Poll" by Katharine Zaleski, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 17, 2009.

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• Justified or not, the Supreme Court has a kind of sacred status in American life. For whatever reason, Presidents can safely run against Congress, and vice versa, but I think there is an inherent popular aversion to assaults on the court itself. Perhaps it has to do with an instinctive belief that life needs umpires.

  Jon Meacham

  Running, Thinking, Umpires

  "Why Obama Shouldn’t Declare War on the Supreme Court" by Jon Meacham, ideas.time.com. April 2, 2012.

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• The liberal left can be as rigid and destructive as any force in American life.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Force, Left, Destructive

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• 'We Were the Mulvaneys' is perhaps the novel closest to my heart. I think of it as a valentine to a passing way of American life, and to my own particular child - and girlhood in upstate New York. Everyone in the novel is enormously close to me, including Marianne's cat, Muffin, who was in fact my own cat.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  New York, Children, Valentine

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