Quotessence
Home / Topics / American Culture Quotes

American Culture Quotes

Browse 400 quotes about American Culture.

Related topics

PeopleThinkingIfsWorldAfrican AmericanAfrican American CultureAmericaBlackStatesHas BeensWayArtBelieveImportantWantCountryKindValuesWhiteFeelsFirstsHumansKidsKnowsLooksMadeMeanNativeNative AmericanNative American CultureProblemRealReasonTodayTryingWhole

American Culture Quotes

“You see? Silbermann assures us that this technique has added years to the sexual life of his patients. But, of course, one must be a born fighter to profit by it. In this respect we are rather backward in France; a certain lack of persistence and determination causes us to lose out in the race of pleasure. It’s different in the United States. There are people band together, organize group therapy sessions, make pornographic films, found institutes and clinics, all dedicated to combating the Decline of erection. America is the largest true phallocracy. By comparison, we French are a sorry lot of quitters.”

SexPleasureAgingDeclineNever Give UpAmerican CultureImpotence
Book:Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable
Create image

“Women facing sexual violence rarely speak up or call the police because they know what awaits them. Even good men hate it when women express their feelings, often responding with mockery, insults or threats. There’s a box in the minds of American men, a box labeled 'Girl Problems,' into which men can stuff any complaint made by women they wish to ignore.”

WomenFeminismFeministGirlsWomen S RightsSexual AbuseRapeAmerican CultureSexual AssaultSexual Violence
Book:Gods of the Flesh: A Skeptic's Journey Through Sex, Politics and Religion
Create image

“Thank God for immigrants. They're the only ones who have any personality left. They still allow themselves emotions, judgments, and all those qualities that we are "evolving" past. I don't know what they're saying, but I can tell they're speaking honestly.”

AmericaLanguageDifferencesRaceUnited StatesHonestyCommunicationImmigrationImmigrantsNew York CityAmerican CultureNew YorkersEthnicityAmericansCultural DifferencesMelting PotImmigrant ExperienceChanging TimesShowing EmotionShowing The World Who You Are
Book:The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America
Create image

“While Europe appears to maintain more reticence embracing it, in America there is no question that work can only be discussed as a secular sacrament, with all the indignity one might expect from such a degrading genus. The Protestant qualifier to Protestant work ethic long ago dissipated, leaving the peculiarly American artifact of viewing one’s wages as a moral reward, one’s continuous employment as a state of grace and one’s retirement as an earthly paradise merited by one’s good works.”

WorkRetirementWork EthicAmerican CultureWage SlaveryProtestant Work Ethic
Book:The Invention of Work
Create image

“If you tour any workplace, you will see countless logos and banners paying lip service to freedom of speech, democracy, logos like ‘speak up, speak out’, creativity, innovation, and on and on goes the list of flashy words and adjectives that companies and corporations want their employees (and outsiders) to believe are part of their work ethics and culture. Yet, most employees learn at the earliest stages of their careers that these bogus adjectives will get them fired, if they are naïve enough to believe in – let alone act on – them.”

WorkIntegrityLaborAbuseControlAmerican CultureWorkplace PoliticsWorkplace CulturePower Relations
Author:Louis Yako
Create image

“In reality, in most American companies, only few handpicked—arguably appointed— individuals in powerful positions; positions like leadership, finance, treasury, advisory, and so on, have the last say in what matters. Their words, no matter how nonsensical, are treated as the ultimate wisdom. Their silences are emulated by everyone else working under them, regardless of any human, capital, or ethical costs resulting from such silences. These powerful individuals are often so emotionally and intellectually abusive that employees treat even their most absurd suggestions as roadmaps dictating the direction of any company or project at hand.”

FearWorkAmerican CultureWorkplace PoliticsWorkplace CultureWorkplace BiasLabor ActivismPower Relations
Author:Louis Yako
Create image

“Home is what we know we ought to want but can't really take. America is not so much a home for anyone as a universal dream of home, a wish whose attraction depends upon its remaining at the level of a wish. The movies bring the boys back but stop as soon as they get them back; for home, that vaunted, all-American ideal, is a sort of death, and an oblique justification for all the wandering that kept you away from it for so long.”

HomeFilmAmerican CultureMovies
Book:America in the Movies or Santa Maria, It Had Slipped My Mind
Create image

“Even when I first visited Italy as a studentessa back in the sixties, our orientation program aboard SS Cristoforo Colombo had included a lesson explaining that whereas in the US a long period of time could elapse between a first kiss and a full sexual encounter, in Italy kisses were considered a nest-immediate prelude to rapport I sessuali.”

RelationshipsDatingAmerican CultureDifferent CulturesCultural DifferencesItalian CultureSexual Relationships
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“The New American Sonnet America doesn't mean the best, America means accountability. America doesn't mean supremacy, America means responsible liberty. America doesn't mean flawless, America means growing against oddity. America doesn't mean condescension, America means caring for all humanity. America doesn't mean white or color, America means celebration of diversity. America doesn't mean red or blue, America means together crossing rigidity. Stars and stripes have no place for hate. Our heart is human, it's humanity we celebrate.”

DiversityRacismConservativeLiberalismInclusionWhite SupremacyAmerican CultureSonnetAmericanNeonazis
Book:The Shape of A Human: Our America Their America
Create image

“The flight attendants were obviously selected according to the phony American-style of “diversity” and “cultural representation” …This phony style of diversity is seen in almost every American work place, including universities. What is noticeably shocking about it is the fact that such employees that presumably represent “diversity” almost always work in hideously underpaid jobs, simply assisting those running the show behind the scenes. The former always act as marketing faces to support the latter in the job of exploiting the world while at the same time giving the unobservant ... viewer the false impression of “diversity”. What we see in every corporate transaction is always a “diverse” face doing the dirty work on behalf of the almost exclusively homogeneous masters constantly preaching a shallow form of diversity and multiculturalism in training and workshops. Whenever you protest an unjust and inhumane rule or a racist policy, the “diverse” employee will always helplessly—and sometimes coldly—tell you, “Sorry, I am just doing my job.”

DiversityPropagandaMulticulturalismAmerican CultureCorporate Culture
Author:Louis Yako
Create image

“America" Loans Interest rates Endless advertisements Usury and deception Countless heavy bodies filled with fear Migrant, refugee, and illegal bodies that came escaping America’s oppression in their own countries… America Depression, anxiety, and pain relief pills A political, media, and institutional matrix of power ran by one lobby… Credit cards Bankruptcy Debts Drugs The homeless Racism Weapons Strict security measures Suffocating any attempt for any meaningful change under the pretext of the homeland security… America Sanctions imposed on this country and that, Internal psychological sanctions imposed on a majority of the naïve who believe themselves to be free… America Tasteless fruit, vegetables, meats, eggs, and cheeses, injected with hormones, sprayed with pesticides and many other carcinogenic substances… America Houses that look beautiful from the outside, inhabited by people who are mostly lonely, going through psychological or nervous breakdowns, or perhaps wrestling with depression or hysteria, the luckiest of them are on daily pills to help them adapt to the psychological and spiritual death surrounding them from all sides… America Fruitless trees and scentless flowers, as if as a punishment or a curse from heaven upon those who stole the land from its native people, after erasing most of them… America Bills Sad letters in the mail, mostly from companies and advertisers wishing you a delightful day and great consumption, encouraging you to solve your problems with more consumption, and reminding you that you may die abruptly of loneliness or the toxins that you consume, and therefore, you must seriously consider purchasing your casket and the plot under which you will be buried… [Original poem published in Arabic on August 27, 2024 at ahewar.org]”

LonelinessDepressionRacismIllusionAmerican DreamColonialismAlienationAmerican CultureRefugeesArabic Poetry
Author:Louis Yako
Create image

“Being customers in our society is dangerous. It alienates us from each other. People will prefer to spend long and lonely hours in front of the TV watching life but never really living. We must honestly ask ourselves this question: Why do we allow ourselves to become a society where neighbors or people in the same neighborhood will only find a reason to talk with each other when their dogs sniff each other by chance? Even then, the talk is just superficial and all about the weather or the pets! Why do we allow ourselves to live in a culture where many people believe that their pets are their best friends because they ‘don’t judge me’ or ‘they love me unconditionally,’ as many like to explain? If we live in a society where the only creature who can understand, love, or support us is our pet, then perhaps we have some serious problems to confront, with all respect to the dogs’ wonderful company and friendship (I have a pet also). Perhaps we need a serious change.”

LoveInspirationalWisdomRelationshipsChangeSocietyLonelinessAlienationAmerican CultureHuman Connections
Author:Louis Yako
Create image

“...that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was—I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon.”

Growing UpAdventureSelf DiscoveryLife ExperienceAmerican CultureTurning PointsTravelingRoad TripHauntedHomesickAmerican LiteratureWho Am IShadow SelfLost SoulStrange MomentQuest For Meaning
Author:Jack Kerouac
Create image

“Conversations about class are resisted in part because there is a tendency to imagine that one's class reflects upon one's character. What is key to America's understanding of class is the persistent belief - despite all evidence to the contrary - that anyone, with the proper discipline and drive, can move from a lower class to a higher class. We recognize that mobility may be difficult, but the key to our collective self-image is the assumption that mobility is always possible, so failure to move up reflects on one's character.”

AmericaClassAmerican Culture
Book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Create image

“[M]ost American workplaces operate in ways that make it almost impossible for anyone to speak truth to power or challenge the status quo and be able to thrive or advance in their career. 'If you dare to open your mouth, you basically ruin your career,' is one of the most common lines I hear from people when I ask them about what usually stops them from saying or doing what they see as the right thing to do.”

AmericaIntegrityLaborWork EthicAmerican CultureIntimidationWorkplace CultureWorkplace AttitudesLabor Activism
Author:Louis Yako
Create image

“The only difference between having an affair here and having an affair there was that the American men would always ended up losing half of his estates over a woman he was infatuated just as much as the next tramp who would come his way, while Japanese men would only earn more respect from their subordinates through the possession of much younger women, as a sign of prowess and affluence, while their wives at home, as if there were rule books distributed nationally on the “proper” marriage etiquette for all young Japanese women to read before they enter into the matrimony, would turn a blind eye on their disloyalty quietly.”

LoveMarriageRelationshipMoralityMen And WomenAffairGirlfriendJapanSarcasticMoralsWeddingAsiaImmoralAsianAmerican CultureBoyfriendLove AffairMatrimonyWomen And MenDisloyaltyDisloyalOffice RomanceAsian CultureCultural DifferenceNot LoyalSocial Moral
Book:The White Man and the Pachinko Girl
Create image

“In the largest sense, the preservation/sagebrush processes outlined in this story are driven by three basic components of American culture: land ownership, independence, and individualism.”

IndependenceIndividualismAmerican HistoryPreservationAmerican CultureAmerican WestEnvironmental HistoryLand OwnershipFrontier ThesisSagebrush Rebellions
Book:Wilderness Preservation and the Sagebrush Rebellions
Create image

“In America, the materio-economic conditions relate to a societal, multi-group existence in a way never before know in world history. American Negro nationalism can never create its own values, find its revolutionary significance, define its political and economic goals, until Negro intellectuals take up the cudgels against the cultural imperialism practiced in all of its manifold ramifications on the Negro within American culture. But this kind of revolution would have to be predicated on the recognition that the cultural and artistic originality of the American nation is founded, historically, on the ingredients of a black aesthetic and artistic base.”

DemocracyIndependenceNationalismAmerican CultureBlack NationalismBlack AmericansCultural NationalismAmerican NationalismCultural DemocracyCultural IndependenceCultural Pluralism
Book:The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership
Create image

“[T]he word 'tolerance', which is commonly used as a positive word when it comes to 'tolerating' difference, is extremely problematic if we think about it. If you simply Google the linguistic meaning of the word, the first definition you will get is (tolerance: noun): 'to allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of (something that one does not necessarily like or agree with) without interference.' In this sense, using this word is disturbing because it suggests two things: first, the person who is doing the tolerating has the upper hand in everything, and therefore, they are kind enough to 'tolerate' others. Second, it gives those doing to 'tolerating' the right to change their mind and stop 'tolerating' others any time they please, which could perhaps lead them to commit violence against the 'intolerable'. I never understand how any native English speaker could thoughtlessly use 'tolerate' as a positive word in such situations. How could they use the same word to tell us that they 'tolerate a medication' and they 'tolerate an immigrant or another religion.' We need a culture that teaches us to appreciate, to love, and to affirm others not to 'tolerate' them.”

InspirationalWisdomLanguageSocietyAcceptanceRacismToleranceAmerican CulturePolitical CorrectnessXenophobia
Author:Louis Yako
Create image

“[I]t is naïve to think that the solution for this problem lies in imposing ‘tolerance’ and ‘acceptance’ of difference as phony corporate job descriptions. We need serious systematic and structural changes to achieve this goal. It takes a lifelong to learn how to love and lifelong to learn how to hate others. Having a healthy society that knows how to value and appreciate difference should not be a job responsibility, but a way of life.”

InspirationalPoliticsSocietyAcceptanceCapitalismToleranceAmerican CulturePolitical CorrectnessCorporate Culture
Author:Louis Yako
Create image

“Many of us with anxiety don’t look like we’ve got a problem because outwardly we function ludicrously well. Or so the merry story goes. Our anxiety sees us make industrious lists and plans, run purposefully from one thing to the next, and move fast upstairs and across traffic intersections. We are a picture of efficiency and energy, always on the move, always doing. We’re Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh, always flitting about convinced everyone depends on us to make things happen and to be there when they do. And to generally attend to happenings. But beneath that veneer were being pushed by fear and doubt and a voice that tells us we’re a bad husband, and insufficient sister, we’re wasting time, we’re not producing enough, - that we turn everything into a clusterfuck.”

Self EsteemAnxietyAmerican CultureInner VoiceSocial Expectations
Book:First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety
Create image

“But they {journalists} are still viewed as a rather privileged category. True, they no longer can ride buses free or go to the movies for free as was the case in Mussolini’s day. But they can still get into most museums or exhibitions without paying. If you’re a smooth operator you can get complimentary tickets for shows or the opera. Until recently, you could get a 30% discount on all domestic flights (now it’s 15%). And if you have trouble with any of your utilities,the utility company’s press office will be glad to give you a have in working things out. In addition, since many Italian journalists have a different sense of what constitutes a conflict of interest from what we do in the United States, they often accept any manner of gifts or paid vacations from companies they regularly cover.”

JournalismItalyAmerican CultureCultural DifferencesJournalistsPrivilegesItalian Culture
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
Create image

“Punks are nihilists who see no tomorrow at all, and dwell in a culture of death music and death imagery. Appropriately, Return focuses on a group of punks who bear names like Trash, Suicide, and Scum, their very names indicating their lack of respect for the world, and themselves. They see themselves as nothing in a world that doesn't value them, and won't survive an apocalypse.”

HorrorNostalgiaPunkAmerican CultureFilm Criticism1980sHorror MoviesHorror Films
Book:Horror Films of the 1980s
Create image