A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Americans tended to think of war as something that had to be done from time to time, for a particular purpose or goal. They fought not for the sake of fighting but for the sake of winning.”
Source: Washington's Crossing
“Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.”
“Americans think anything you do not get paid for is not worth doing. As a consequence, the things that don't get done are often the most worthwhile.”
“Americans think New Yorkers are property obsessed, but clearly they haven’t lived a day in Hong Kong. In this part of the world, a man isn’t a man until he is a homeowner. His entire life leads up to the singular moment when he hands over the down-payment check and puts his signature on the triplicate purchase agreement. All the good grades and job promotions he has received are mere preparation; and every source of happiness - marriage, children and retirement - depends on it.”
Source: No City for Slow Men: Hong Kong's quirks and quandaries laid bare
“Americans think of themselves collectively as a huge rescue squad on twenty-four hour call to any spot on the globe where dispute and conflict may erupt.”
Source: SOUL ON ICE
“Americans think Soviets are so grim. I want them to see that they can smile.”
“Americans think that if you're popular, there must be something wrong with you.”
“Americans think that they have a history, but it's nothing compared to Europe.”
“Americans think the only funny Brits are John Cleese, Benny Hill and whoever makes our toothpaste. They're not laughing with us, they are laughing at us.”
“Americans think their danger is terrorists. They don't understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution.... The terrorists are not anything like the threat we face from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism.... The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown”
“Americans thinking that America will continue to lead the world in innovation and quality of life without some quick and serious educational improvements are dangerously delusional.”
“Americans threw away their communities in order to save a few dollars on hair dryers and plastic food storage tubs, never stopping to reflect on what they were destroying.”
Source: The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Cent
“Americans to bow our heads in humility before our Heavenly Father, a God who calls us not to judge our neighbors, but to love them, to ask His guidance upon our nation and its leaders in every level of government.”
“Americans today confuse freedom with not being asked to sacrifice. The fact that you can't have everything you want exactly when you want it has somehow become un-American.”
Source: When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden: What the Government Should be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism
“Americans today spend less on food, as a percentage of disposable income (10%), than any other industrialized nation... meaning that we could afford to spend more on food if we chose to.”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“Americans took a great deal too much credit for creating wealth, when most of the time they had really just been living off natural bounty unprecedented in the history of the world.”
Source: Moo
“Americans tote guns because they're assertive citizens, not docile subjects of a permanent governing class. They love their military because they think there's something contemptible about Europeans preening and posing as a great power when they can't even stop some nickel'n'dime Balkan genital-severers piling up hundreds of thousands of corpses on their borders.”
“Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up the proper recipe, invariably designated "the lesson of history.”
Source: So this is depravity
“Americans try to talk about positive family values, although the actual state of things is disastrous.”
“Americans understand better than the Europeans and the English that any publicity is good.”
“Americans understand that one of our great national strengths is innovation. Great innovators - Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others - are household names.”
“Americans understand that our security is enhanced when the United States is trusted and respected in the world.”
“Americans understand that the game is rigged, and they've had enough of it. They're ready to fight back. They want a Washington that works for them, i think that people are getting more engaged, politically, and they're seeing through a lot of the rhetoric that politicians have been throwing out there for a long time. They want to see some real change, and I think that's what we need to work on.”
“Americans understand that they have no stronger ally, no better friend, than Australia.”
“Americans understand we fight not a religion; ours is not a campaign against the Muslim faith. Ours is a campaign against evil.”
“Americans use the word "dream" as often as psychoanalysts do.”
“Americans used to be 'citizens.' Now we are 'consumers.”
“Americans used to be able to depend on their jobs to provide a stable retirement.”
“Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security.”
“Americans usually believe that nothing is impossible.”
“Americans want action for their money. They are fascinated by its self- reproducing qualities if it's put to work. Gold- hoarding goes against the American grain; it fits in better with European pessimism than with America's traditional optimism.”
Source: The Joy of Money: The Woman's Guide to Financial Freedom
“Americans want and deserve a broad array of health insurance choices so they can identify those that best fit their own individual or family needs. These choices expand when we allow free enterprise to foster innovation, not smother it with taxes and one-size fits all ideology.”
“Americans want beauties, not me. I’m not the Parisian bombshell they expected. Can you see me as a chorus girl? Where’s my feather up the ass? They think I’m sad, they’re dumb. I don’t connect to them”
“Americans want government that is leaner, more efficient, and less intrusive into their personal lives.”
“Americans want grungy people, stabbing themselves in the head on stage. They get a bright bunch like us, with deodorant on, they don't get it. I'm 24 years old, I've got a load a money, what am I gonna do, sit at home and twiddle me thumbs? No. I'm gonna go out and 'ave it.”
“Americans want our leaders to defend our values, our culture our legacy of liberty and our way of life, not apologize...”
“Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy.”
“Americans want to be exposed to the opportunities that a changing world can offer.”
“Americans want to be protected, but not at the cost of vitiating the values that make us Americans.”
“Americans want to defeat terrorism and they want the basic character of this country to survive and prosper. They want both security and liberty, and unless we give them both, and we can if we try, we have failed.”
“Americans want to go to heaven without dying.”
“Americans want to have what members of Congress have: guaranteed health coverage.”
“Americans want to win; bin Laden thinks he's winning now.”
“Americans wanted to settle all our difficulties with Russia and then go to the movies and drink Coke.”
“Americans were convinced in their own minds that they were very miserable, and those who think so are so. There is nothing so easy as to persuade people that they are badly governed. Take happy and comfortable people and talk to them with the art of the evil one, and they can soon be made discontented with their government, their rulers, with everything around them, and even with themselves.”
Source: The Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson
“Americans were happy to celebrate their super-rich and, at least sometimes, worry about their poor. But putting those two conversations together and talking about economic inequality was pretty much taboo.”
Source: Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
“Americans were in love with mesmerism because it was something that you could do in your own home. You could mesmerize or hypnotize your aunt or your mother or your father and people would go into these trance states and you could introduction autosuggestions tot hem or as some people saw it, you could cure them of illnesses.”
“Americans were no more shallow than any other people, just more pampered, so they had come to treasure their shallowness, making pop singers and television actors their most revered leaders. Pampered but lovable. He loved America, even though he held it in contempt. Love and contempt were not incompatible. In fact, one was rarely found without the other.”
Source: Century's Son: A Novel
“Americans were outraged and horrified by this president's reckless spending and his endless assaults on the Constitution, but no issue drove them to rise up and fight back like Obamacare - both the abominable legislative monstrosity itself and the tyrannical, corrupt manner by which Obama crammed it through the legislative process.”
“Americans were people who wanted to leave every place better than they found it, to leave every man more of a man than they found him. ... Americans could open doors to almost all that was admirable - it was their misfortune, not their fault, that movies and victrolas and advertisements squeezed in when they opened the door.”
Source: Pipers and a dancer