American Life Quotes - Page 5

• We cannot allow the defense of American lives to be held hostage by the United Nations -- which has already given Saddam Hussein a final warning, and now wants to give him another final warning. And, if he doesn't heed that, they will threaten him with yet another warning.

  Thomas Sowell

  War, Giving, Finals

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• An absolutely devastating ridicule of all that is false, primitive, and vicious in current American life: the abuses of power, hero worship, aimless violence, materialistic obsession, intolerance, and every form of hypocrisy.

  Terry Southern

  Hero, Hypocrisy, Abuse

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• Looking back over a decade one sees the ideal of a university become a myth, a vision, a meadow lark among the smoke stacks. Yet perhaps it is there at Princeton, only more elusive than under the skies of the Prussian Rhineland or Oxfordshire; or perhaps some men come upon it suddenly and possess it, while others wander forever outside. Even these seek in vain through middle age for any corner of the republic that preserves so much of what is fair, gracious, charming and honorable in American life.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Education, College, Men

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• The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable.

  Mary McCarthy

  Character, Views, Argument

  Mary McCarthy (1961). “On the contrary”, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy

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• The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.

  Amiri Baraka

  Moving, Reality, Blue

  Imamu Amiri Baraka (1984). “Daggers and javelins: essays, 1974-1979”, William Morrow & Co

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• By the end of the third decade of this century, all of American life - politics, international relations, our homes, our jobs, our industries, the kind of cars we drive - will be forever transformed by the climate and energy challenge.

  Joseph J. Romm

  Jobs, Home, Car

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• There was never a promise that race relations in America would be entirely resolved during my presidency or anybody's presidency. I mean, this has been a running thread - and - and fault line in American life and American politics since its founding.

  Barack Obama

  Running, Mean, Race

  Interview with Jon Sopel on BBC, www.bbc.com. July 24, 2015.

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• There is a need for heroism in American life today.

  Vicki Baum

  Life, Time, America

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• As the United States drifts from its Judeo-Christian foundation and as the state becomes ever more pervasive in American life, government could ultimately insist on full allegiance from the people, an allegiance belonging only to God.

  H. Wayne House

  Christian, Religious, Government

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• Only by acknowledging the full extent of slavery's full grip on U.S. Society - its intimate connections to present day wealth and power, the depth of its injury to black Americans, the shocking nearness in time of its true end - can we reconcile the paradoxes of current American life.

  Douglas A. Blackmon

  Black, Depth, Connections

  Douglas A. Blackmon (2012). “Slavery by Another Name: The re-enslavement of black americans from the civil war to World War Two”, p.381, Icon Books

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• There is tremendous long-term harm when Americans accept ethnic and class balkanization as a de facto fixture of American life. I think that impoverishes our understanding of each other.

  Richard Benjamin

  Thinking, Class, Long

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• The actual God of many Americans... is simply the current of American life.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Currents

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• The government of the United States, under Lyndon Johnson, proposes to concern itself over the quality of American life. And this is something very new in the political theory of free nations. The quality of life has heretofore depended on the quality of the human beings who gave tone to that life, and they were its priests and its poets, not its bureaucrats.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Government, Political, Quality

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• In general, American life is more easy-going. And civic pride, national pride in a cultural sense, is great in America. I think what they esteem in America is character and energy, and being different and superior to other peoples. Of course, every nation feels itself to be superior, but in America it's a jaunty feeling, and in some cases a rather ominous one among the super-patriots.

  James Salter

  Character, Pride, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I think if we're going to live in this - in this world - in this technological world where information can be disseminated so quickly, we have to be serious and take firm, strong action against those who are putting American lives at risk. Because this will put people's lives at risk.

  Peter King

  Strong, Thinking, People

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• The corporations have taken over. Even in the recording studio. Actually, the corporate companies have taken over American life most everywhere. Go coast to coast and you will see people wearing the same clothes, thinking the same thoughts, eating the same food. Everything is processed.

  Bob Dylan

  Taken, Thinking, Clothes

  "Bob Dylan: 'Passion is a young man's game, older people gotta be wise'". Interview with Robert Love, www.independent.co.uk. February 7, 2015.

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• We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society . . . . What America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  America, Reform, Movement

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• Those who first introduced compulsory education into American life knew exactly why children should go to school and learn to read: to save their souls.... Consistent with this goal, the first book written and printed for children in America was titled Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in either England, drawn from the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls' Nourishment.

  Dorothy H Cohen

  Education, Spiritual, Children

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• Julie Orringer is the real thing, a breathtaking chronicler of the secrets and cruelties underneath the surface of middle-class American life. These are terrific stories-wise, compassionate and haunting.

  Dan Chaon

  Wise, Real, Class

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• The final test of Afro-American studies will be the extent to which they rid the minds of whites and blacks alike of false learning, and the extent to which they promote for blacks and whites alike a completely rewarding participation in American life.

  Jay Saunders Redding

  Mind, Finals, Afros

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• If we [Americans] are a strong people, a united people, why do we always have to hear how great we are? What is this self-love? Where does this come from? It got worse, because after the war we thought we'd won it. That's the first myth. Frankly, Russia won it. The Soviet Union sacrificed far greater form than anyone else to win that war. Secondly, we had the atomic bomb. We should not have dropped it on Japan. We did as an example to the Soviets, not to defeat Japan and to save American lives. These are myths that we explode with a lot of research early on.

  Oliver Stone

  Strong, War, Winning

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Serious skeptics, true believers, and seekers of every stripe will want to read Mitch Horowitz's vibrant, probing, and richly researched account of the impact of the positive-thinking movement on every aspect of American life today. Filled with a cast of remarkable characters and many lively tales, One Simple Idea is a readable, responsible examination of the limits and possibilities of mind-power as a source of constructive transformation.

  Judith Viorst

  Character, Positive Thinking, Simple

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• We urgently need a debate about the best ways of supporting families in modern America, without blinders that prevent us from seeing the full extent of dependence and interdependence in American life. As long as we pretend that only poor or abnormal families need outside assistance, we will shortchange poor families, overcompensate rich ones, and fail to come up with effective policies for helping families in the middle.

  Stephanie Coontz

  America, Long, Needs

  Stephanie Coontz (2016). “The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap”, p.73, Basic Books

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• There is not one text reference to characteristic Protestant religious life in these books... The dominant theme is the denial of religion as an actual part of American life.

  Paul Vitz

  Christian, Religious, Book

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• In grades 1 through 4 these books introduce the child to U.S. society - to family life, community activities, ordinary economic transactions, and some history. None of the books covering grades 1 through 4 contain one word referring to any religious activity in contemporary American life.

  Paul Vitz

  Christian, Religious, Children

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