Quotes About United States
Emma Lazarus
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
― Emma Lazarus
tags: united-states
Isaac Asimov
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov
tags: anti-intellectualism, cult, culture, democracy, ignorance, intellectual, political, politics, united-states, willful-ignorance
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
tags: america, history, immigration, politics, revolution, united-states, usa
Dave Barry
“I like the relaxed way in which the Japanese approach religion. I think of myself as basically a moral person, but I'm definitely not religious, and I'm very tired of the preachiness and obsession with other people's behavior characteristic of many religious people in the United States. As far as I could tell, there's nothing preachy about Buddhism. I was in a lot of temples, and I still don't know what Buddhists believe, except that at one point Kunio said 'If you do bad things, you will be reborn as an ox.'
This makes as much sense to me as anything I ever heard from, for example, the Reverend Pat Robertson.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry Does Japan
tags: buddhism, buddhists, humor, japanese, japanese-religion, junio, moral, obsession, pat-robertson, preachiness, reincarnation, religious-people, reverend, sense, temples, united-states
Noam Chomsky
“It's not radical Islam that worries the US -- it's independence”
― Noam Chomsky
tags: america, independence, islam, united-states, us
Christopher Hitchens
“[Said during a debate when his opponent asserted that atheism and belief in evolution lead to Nazism:]
Atheism by itself is, of course, not a moral position or a political one of any kind; it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension. For you to say of Nazism that it was the implementation of the work of Charles Darwin is a filthy slander, undeserving of you and an insult to this audience. Darwin’s thought was not taught in Germany; Darwinism was so derided in Germany along with every other form of unbelief that all the great modern atheists, Darwin, Einstein and Freud were alike despised by the National Socialist regime.
Now, just to take the most notorious of the 20th century totalitarianisms – the most finished example, the most perfected one, the most ruthless and refined one: that of National Socialism, the one that fortunately allowed the escape of all these great atheists, thinkers and many others, to the United States, a country of separation of church and state, that gave them welcome – if it’s an atheistic regime, then how come that in the first chapter of Mein Kampf, that Hitler says that he’s doing God’s work and executing God’s will in destroying the Jewish people? How come the fuhrer oath that every officer of the Party and the Army had to take, making Hitler into a minor god, begins, “I swear in the name of almighty God, my loyalty to the Fuhrer?” How come that on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it says Gott mit uns, God on our side? How come that the first treaty made by the Nationalist Socialist dictatorship, the very first is with the Vatican? It’s exchanging political control of Germany for Catholic control of German education. How come that the church has celebrated the birthday of the Fuhrer every year, on that day until democracy put an end to this filthy, quasi-religious, superstitious, barbarous, reactionary system?
Again, this is not a difference of emphasis between us. To suggest that there’s something fascistic about me and about my beliefs is something I won't hear said and you shouldn't believe.”
― Christopher Hitchens
tags: adolf-hitler, albert-einstein, barbaric, catholicism, charles-darwin, darwin, darwinism, einstein, evolution, fascism, fascistic, freud, fuhrer, germany, hitler, jewish, mein-kampf, nazi, nazism, pope, science, separation-of-church-and-state, sigmund-freud, superstitious, united-states, vatican
Thomas Jefferson
“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding...
{Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823}”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson
tags: fable, father, freedom-of-thought, irreligion, jupiter, minerva, myth, reason, supreme-being, united-states, virgin, virgin-birth
Christopher Hitchens
“How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.”
― Christopher Hitchens
tags: atheism, fundamentalism, religion, secularism, separation-of-church-and-state, united-states, united-states-constitution
Jarod Kintz
“I wish I could grow swords like I can roses. Wouldn’t war be so romantic then? Then the U.S. could really show the world how much it loves it.”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not FOR SALE
tags: country, flower, flowers, globalism, humor, love, romance, romantic, rose, roses, sword, swords, united-states, war, word-junkies, world 224 Please Share This Post
H.L. Mencken
“In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.”
― H.L. Mencken
tags: american, common-sense, corruption, decency, force, hate, honesty, humor, politicians, politics, republic, trust, united-states 221 Please Share This Post
Walter Cronkite
“America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.”
― Walter Cronkite
tags: america, health-care, health-insurance, united-states, usa 96 Please Share This Post
Howard Zinn
“What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
tags: patriotism, united-states, war 96 Please Share This Post
Christopher Hitchens
“When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
tags: atheism, bastille, bullying, censorship, demagogy, dictatorship, enlightenment, fascism, fatwa, first-amendment, free-speech, friendship, george-hw-bush, hate, humor, individualism, intimidation, iran, irony, khomeini, literature, love, principles, religion, rushdie, satanic-verses, stupidity, theocracy, united-states, united-states-constitution, washington-post 78 Please Share This Post
Thomas L. Friedman
“America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can't be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of new minds, a risk-taking culture with no stigma attached to trying and failing, a noncorrupt bureaucracy, and financial markets and a venture capital system that are unrivaled at taking new ideas and turning them into global products.”
― Thomas L. Friedman
tags: america, capitalism, economics, freedom, liberty, politics, united-states, usa 72 Please Share This Post
David Levithan
“I want to have faith in strangers. I want to have faith in what we're all going to do next. But I'm worried. I see things shifting from United We Stand to God Bless America. I don't believe in God Bless America. I don't believe a higher power is standing beside us and guiding us. I don't believe we're being singled out. I believe much more in United We Stand. I have my doubts, but I want it to be true. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we really came together, if we really found a common humanity? The hitch is that you can't find a common humanity just because you have a common enemy. You have to find a common humanity because you believe that's true. ”
― David Levithan, Love Is the Higher Law
tags: god, god-bless-america, united-states, united-we-stand 65 Please Share This Post
Christopher Hitchens
“Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revolution that announced universal principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would have been no French proclamation of The Rights of Man. Without his brilliant negotiation of the Louisiana treaty, there would be no United States of America. Without Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, there would have been no Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and no basis for the most precious clause of our most prized element of our imperishable Bill of Rights - the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
― Christopher Hitchens
tags: 1st-amendment, american-revolution, bill-of-rights, declaration-of-independence, freedom-of-religion, james-madison, liberty, marquis-de-lafayette, thomas-jefferson, united-states, us-constitution 56 Please Share This Post
D.H. Lawrence
“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature
tags: america, social-isolation, sociopathy, united-states 55 Please Share This Post
Zakir Naik
“If he is terrorising the terrorists, if he is terrorising America the terrorist [...] I am with him. Every Muslim should be a terrorist.”
― Zakir Naik
tags: bigotry, fanaticism, islam, islamism, muslims, osama-bin-laden, terrorism, terrorists, united-states 51 Please Share This Post
Christopher Hitchens
“An old joke has an Oxford professor meeting an American former graduate student and asking him what he's working on these days. 'My thesis is on the survival of the class system in the United States.' 'Oh really, that's interesting: one didn't think there was a class system in the United States.' 'Nobody does. That's how it survives.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
tags: class, humour, joke, united-states 51 Please Share This Post
Howard Zinn
“The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, leeways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen, winning tickets in lotteries. There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media--none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
tags: united-states 49 Please Share This Post
Noam Chomsky
“Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.”
― Noam Chomsky
tags: 2008, atheism, baptism, bill-clinton, born-again-christianity, christianity, church, fundamentalism, hymns, jimmy-carter, lyndon-b-johnson, piety, political-campaigns, politics, politics-of-the-united-states, religion, united-states, united-states-elections-2008 45 Please Share This Post
Noam Chomsky
“This Sarah Palin phenomenon is very curious. I think somebody watching us from Mars—they would think the country has gone insane.”
― Noam Chomsky
tags: 2008, mars, mccain-campaign-2008, politics, sarah-palin, united-states, united-states-elections-2008 43 Please Share This Post
Herbert Hoover
“My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor.”
― Herbert Hoover
tags: america, opportunity, patriotism, united-states, usa 43 Please Share This Post
Dennis Kucinich
“Everyone should have health insurance? I say everyone should have health care. I'm not selling insurance.”
― Dennis Kucinich
tags: government, health-care, health-insurance, insurance, political, politics, united-states 42 Please Share This Post
Luis Valdez
“No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country...we did not, in fact, come to the United States at all. The United States came to us.”
― Luis Valdez
tags: chicano, freedom, history, liberty, native-american, society, united-states, usa 37 Please Share This Post
Noam Chomsky
“In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.”
― Noam Chomsky
tags: freedom-of-speech, united-states 29 Please Share This Post
Thomas A. Edison
“People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest ...But here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. If the currency issued by the People were no good, then the bonds would be no good, either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold.”
― Thomas A. Edison
tags: interest, money, united-states, wealth 22 Please Share This Post
Alexander Hamilton
“It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.”
― Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers
tags: accident, chance, government, society, united-states, violence 22 Please Share This Post
Steven Wright
“I have a map of the United States... Actual size. It says, 'Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile.' I spent last summer folding it. I hardly ever unroll it. People ask me where I live, and I say, 'E6.”
― Steven Wright
tags: humor, map, united-states 19 Please Share This Post
Ta-Nehisi Coates
“You may have heard the talk of diversity, sensitivity training, and body cameras. These are all fine and applicable, but they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them. The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country’s criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority. The abuses that have followed from these policies—the sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects—are the product of democratic will. And so to challenge the police is to challenge the American people who send them into the ghettos armed with the same self-generated fears that compelled the people who think they are white to flee the cities and into the Dream. The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
tags: african-americans, america, blacks, police, police-reform, race-relations, racism, united-states, united-states-of-america, usa, whites
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