American Life Quotes - Page 7

• The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

  Adam Gopnik

  Brutality, Scandal, Moral

  "The Caging of America" by Adam Gopnik, www.newyorker.com. January 30, 2012.

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• Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.

  Warren E. Burger

  Fabric, Crime

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• American life, in large cities, is a perpetual assault on the senses and the nerves; it is out of asceticism, out of unworldliness, precisely, that we bear it.

  Joseph McCarthy

  Cities, Nerves, Asceticism

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• I know in an existential sense that life can change on a dime ... something has instantly and inexorably changed in American life.

  John Lahr

  Dimes, Existential, Changed

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• The best thing about being President is that it gets you out of American life. I don't know what the theory is behind this, but it is a fact. The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off to a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him.

  Russell Baker

  President, Firsts, Facts

  Russell Baker (1983). “So This Is Depravity”, Pocket Books

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• The unions are the first feeble effort to conquer the industrial jungle for democratic life. They may not succeed, but if they don't their failure will be a tragedy for civilization, a loss of cooperative effort, a baulking of energy, and the fixing in American life of a class-structure.

  Walter Lippmann

  Loss, Civilization, Class

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest”

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• I feel like one of the things that is central to American life is the religious experience, and I think that the experience of being Muslim in America is as valid and as important a perspective on the religious experience of America as evangelical Christianity or Judaism - whatever it may be.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Religious, Thinking, America

  "Actor-writer Ayad Akhtar". "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. April 26, 2012.

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• American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.

  George Santayana

  Powerful, America, Optimism

  George Santayana (1921). “Character & Opinion in the United States: With Reminiscences of William James and Josiah Royce and Academic Life in America”

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• Saigon, U.S.A. aptly documents the birth of a new American community, uprooted in the aftermath of war and forever torn apart by the wounds of the past, yet one capable of healing against all odds. An engrossing yet succinct film that captures not only a major incident in Vietnamese American life, but also an important chapter of American history. A profound film that manages to confront us with the deepest sorrow while allowing us to be hopeful about what it means to be human.

  Nguyen Qui Duc

  War, Healing, Mean

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• I certainly do have this feeling of affection for the absolute sense of intellectual freedom that exists as a live nerve, a live wire, right through the center of American life.

  Norman Mailer

  Freedom, Feelings, Intellectual

  "Mailer Tells a Lot. Not All, but a Lot.; His Longest Love Affair Is With the U.S." by Bernard Weinraub, www.nytimes.com. October 4, 2000.

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• The reason given by the President in asking Congress to declare war against Germany is that the German government has declared certain war zones, within which, by the use of submarines, she sinks, without notice, American ships and destroys American lives.

  George W. Norris

  War, Government, President

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• Many things about American life, that even secular people consider good, have flowed from the presence of a robust, resilient institutional Christianity.

  Ross Douthat

  People, Christianity, Resilient

  Source: www.christianpost.com

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• To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any church, is an outrage against the liberty of conscience, which is one of the foundations of American life.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Presidential, Church, Liberty

  Theodore Roosevelt (1908). “Americanism in Religion”

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• The trouble with me is that I'm an outsider. And that's a very hard thing to be in American life.

  Jackie Kennedy

  Outsiders, Trouble, Hard

  "The Unknown Wisdom of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis" edited by Bill Adler, 1994.

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• We have to be honest, we have to be truthful and speak to the one dirty secret in American life, and that is racism.

  Henry Cisneros

  Dirty, Racism, Secret

  1993 In US News and World Report, 19 Apr.

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• It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture.

  Hans Hofmann

  Spiritual, Art, Self

  "Search for the Real: And Other Essays". Book by Hans Hofmann. "Painting and Culture", p. 56, 1948.

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• The Holocaust only emerged in American life after Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day war against its Arab neighbours.

  Norman Finkelstein

  War, Israel, Holocaust

  "The business of death" by Norman Finkelstein, www.theguardian.com. July 12, 2000.

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• I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.

  Herbert Hoover

  Character, Criticism, Cottages

  Herbert Hoover (1929). “The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover, 1928”, p.109, Stanford University Press

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• There is a lot in American politics (and in American life) that is angry, greedy, reckless and violent.

  Charlie Pierce

  Greedy, Reckless, Violent

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• My evaluation of President George W. Bush is nothing personal. He's a lovely person. Sadly, I believe he will be remembered for taking us into war unnecessarily at the cost of thousands of American lives, injuries to tens of thousands of our troops, and trillions of dollars to our economy - enormous costs to our reputation, and undermining the capability of our military to protect us. That, I think, will be the overwhelming issue for which his presidency will be remembered: extensive damage to our country.

  Nancy Pelosi

  Country, Military, War

  Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

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• Lincoln is such an iconic figure in American history. He seems to reflect so many elements of American culture that we consider essential, whether it's the self-made man, the frontier hero, the politician who tries to act in a moral way as well as in a political way, Honest Abe. His career raises these questions that are still with us, the power of the federal government vis-à-vis the states, the question of race in American life, can we be a society of equals? There are so many issues central to Lincoln's career that are still part of our society one hundred and fifty years later.

  Eric Foner

  Hero, Men, Race

  "Eric Foner on the Perennial Relevance of Abraham Lincoln". Interview with Aaron Leonard, historynewsnetwork.org. October 4, 2010.

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• We are saving American lives every single day. The court system has not made it easy for us. We've even created a new office in Homeland Security dedicated to the forgotten American victims of illegal immigrant violence, of which there are many.

  Donald Trump

  Office, Saving, Violence

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• Chelsea Manning's treachery put American lives at risk and exposed some of our nation's most sensitive secrets. President Obama now leaves in place a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won't be held accountable for their crimes.

  Paul Ryan

  Risk, Secret, President

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• That's one of the beauties, I think, of African American life. There was this thing called slavery and adjustments were made. It literally destroyed millions, but it didn't destroy everybody and it didn't destroy the inner lives of all the people who experienced it.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Thinking, People, African American

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I'm personally very grateful to my many friends in the Greek-American community, sons and daughters of Greece who have found success in every walk of American life.

  Barack Obama

  Daughter, Grateful, Son

  Source: time.com

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