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American Dream Quotes

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American Dream Quotes

“Let us be thankful for the fools,' Mark Twain wrote with typically dark humor in 1897. 'But for them the rest of us could not succeed.' Of all the paradoxes of failure in America, surely this is the darkest. Long ago, we saw through old fables of rags to riches; it is still fun to dream, but we know that we are partaking of a cultural myth. But if we do not quite believe in that kind of success, our faith in the myths of failure is unshaken. We are merrily cynical about whether the average tycoon really tugged on those bootstraps, but we still believe with deadly seriousness that the reasons for failure are usually individual-- "in the man." Failure is not the dark side of the American Dream; it is the foundation of it. The American Dream gives each of us the chance to be a born loser.”

SuccessFailureAmerican Dream
Author:Scott A. Sandage
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“I say, I can not identify that thing which is called happiness, that thing whose token is a laugh, or a smile, or a silent serenity on the lip. I may have been happy, but it is not in my conscious memory now. Nor do I feel a longing for it, as though I had never had it; my spirit seeks different food from happiness, for I think I have a suspicion of what it is. I have suffered wretchedness, but not because of the absence of happiness, and without praying for happiness. I pray for peace -- for motionlessness -- for the feeling of myself, as of some plant, absorbing life without seeking it, and existing without individual sensation. I feel that there can be no perfect peace in individualness. Therefore, I hope one day to feel myself drank up into the pervading spirit animating all things. I feel I am an exile here. I still go straying.”

American Dream
Book:Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities
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“The disruption of the anticipated American future that was simply to have unrolled out of the solid American past, out of each generation’s getting smartersmarter for knowing the inadequacies and limitations of the generations beforeout of each new generation’s breaking away from the parochialism a little further, out of the desire to go the limit in America with your rights, forming yourself as an ideal person who gets rid of the traditional Jewish habits and attitudes, who frees himself of the pre-America insecurities and the old, constraining obsessions so as to live unapologetically as an equal among equals.”

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Book:American Pastoral
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“America is The Warning (Sonnet) Finally America has fallen, it's a great day for the human race, now that the american dream is infected, it's a golden occasion for earth upliftment. Uncle Sam has contracted something nasty, nothing surprising, it's long time coming; the time has never been more immaculate, for actual human cultures and civilizations to dream beyond the monkeys of silicon valley. It's a golden age of decolonization, time to rescue your mind from the parasites; it's time for great rejoicing, now that the land of plague has lost its marbles - fall of America is a blessing for humankind. West never had culture to begin with, neither Washington nor Rome or Buck House - when parasites bury themselves in castles, light of the human engulf the world around.”

Social JusticeCivil RightsFascismAmerican DreamWhite SupremacyRight WingDecolonizationNeonaziMagaFascist
Book:Sonnets From The Mountaintop
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“This is the dark part of the American story, the kind of thing we work to hide. Mobility means discomfort, because so much has to change; one can’t allow for the satisfactions of stasis: You prick yourself and move, digging spurs into your own hide to get going, forcing yourself to forget the comforts of the barn. In this country, we speak grandly of this metamorphosis, never stopping to consider that for many class travelers with passports stamped for new territory, the trip is nothing less than a bridge burning.”

TransformationAmerican DreamSocial MobilityCareer Transition
Book:Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams
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“I do not believe in the American Dream, but I believe in American daydreams. The American Dream keeps you working for a future that never comes built on a past that never happened. It is not so much a dream as a value judgement. A pretense of patriotism at a price few can pay and at a cost few can bear. But daydreams don't carry that burden, daydreams are a protected realm free from expectation. They soften things that are hard and bad letting you imagine a past that went better than it did and a future that could go better than it will. Day dreams are private and pointless. No one expects day dreams to come true yet sometimes to one's joyous surprise, they do.”

ExpectationsAmerican DreamDay Dreams
Book:The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir
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“Almost every child on earth dreams of travelling to America, then you grow up, and you realize, it's the last place on earth any civilized person should step foot on - and those born here can't wait to get out. It's not American Dream, it's American Scream - utopia for a white, straight, misogynistic animal kingdom to flourish, but an absolute purgatory for a civilized human society.”

AmericaUnited StatesTrumpUsaAmerican DreamMisogynyHate CrimeNeonaziChristian NationalismDomestic Terrorism
Book:Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood
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“You see, I'm not like Paul [Simonon] or the others, I had a chance to be a 'good, normal person' with a nice car and a house in the suburbs – the golden apple or whatever you call it. But I saw through it. I saw it was an empty life. I only saw my father once a year (after being sent to boarding school). He was a real disciplinarian who was always giving me speeches about how he had pulled himself up by the sweat of his brow: a real guts and determination man. What he was really saying to me was, 'If you play by the rules, you can end up like me'. And I saw right away I didn't want to end up like him. Once I got out on my own, I realized I was right. I saw how the rules worked and I didn't like them. [-- LA Times interview]”

American DreamModern LifeModern SocietySuburban LifeCapitalist Values
Author:Joe Strummer
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“The fact of the matter is that you hate America; hate it with all the unrepentant, unreasoning fury of a Nazi stormtrooper or a southern slaveowner or a Syrian suicide bomber; have hated it since you were a sniveling schoolgirl in a shriveled up Irish backwater in Queens, since you were a spoiled college girl spitting in soldier's faces, since you first learned the awful truth that America has no use for pitiful imposters like you. You're not an aristocrat, Marian dear. You're an Irish potato farmer in a plumed hat, fighting for a white-columned mansion you never had and never will.”

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Book:There Your Heart Lies
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“Hope Gone Sour (American Sonnet) America is not a country, America is an abomination. America is a scourge on the fabric of time, the ideal tale of precaution. America is a living record of humans regressing to animal. America is a perfect specimen of democracy cleverly dismantled. America is a nation built by terrorists for the terrorists. America holds world record for humanity's worst of atrocities. America is a promise of hope gone sour. America is plague amongst fellowship of powers.”

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Book:Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood
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“And, yeah, she had known when she signed the mortgage papers that she was agreeing to a certain degree of surveillance in exchange for finally living what she’d been raise to consider the American Dream. She had simply never considered that one day she might prefer waking up.”

American Dream
Book:A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers
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“Be careful what you say. It comes true. It comes true. I had to leave home in order to see the world logically, logic the new way of seeing. I learned to think that mysteries are for explanation. I enjoy the simplicity. Concrete pours out of my mouth to cover the forests with freeways and sidewalks. Give me plastics, periodical tables, t.v. dinners with vegetables no more complex than peas mixed with diced carrots. Shine floodlights into dark corners: no ghosts.”

American Dream
Book:The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
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“L’avevo fatto davvero, ero partita, e stavo finalmente assaporando il primo morso di quell’American Dream che avevo tanto sognato. E mentre dalla finestra della mia stanza al nono piano guardavo il mio primo tramonto californiano sciogliersi sullo skyline di Downtown, per la prima volta ho creduto davvero che tutto fosse possibile.”

American DreamViaggioViaggiare
Book:La felicità è una scelta: Un viaggio per trovare il coraggio di ascoltare la propria voce
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“We [Americans] are accustomed to think of ourselves as an emancipated people; we say that we are democratic, liberty-loving, free of prejudices and hatred. This is the melting-pot, the seat of a great human experiment. Beautiful words, full of noble, idealistic sentiment. Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quacks, agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous. What have we to offer the world beside the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment? The land of opportunity has become the land of senseless sweat and struggle. The goal of all our striving has long been forgotten. We no longer wish to succor the oppressed and homeless; there is no room in this great, empty land for those who, like our forefathers before us, now seek a place of refuge. Millions of men and women are, or were until very recently, on relief, condemned like guinea pigs to a life of forced idleness. The world meanwhile looks to us with a desperation such as it has never known before. Where is the democratic spirit? Where are the leaders?”

DemocracyGreedAmerican DreamAmerican Culture
Book:The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
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“In one of my early works I once wrote, "America is a great country, built by great people". And it took me some time to look through the fallacy of this statement. I could still justify it by saying, it depends on the context - which would be technically true. But my dignity, my conscience, my morality - everything that is civilized in me, has been eating me alive for some time now over this one statement. Because if we throw away all technicality and look from a simple, everyday human perspective - nothing about the the birth of America is great - America is a terrorist nation, built by terrorists who invaded other people's land, stripped them of their homes, and built a spin-off of the ruthless British empire over their blood and bones. You think America's homeless problem is something new! It's not - America has been making people homeless ever since the pilgrims set foot in Plymouth Rock. The pilgrims were not pioneers, they were terrorists.”

SlaveryAmerican DreamColonialismAmerican HistoryImperialismWhite SupremacyAmerican CultureColonizationNative AmericansColonial History
Book:Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth
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“Assim vamos remando, barcos a navegar contra a correnteza, incessantemente levados de volta ao passado”

American DreamGatsby
Book:The Great Gatsby: The classic American novel about love lost and the impossible dream, now in an expanded, deluxe Edition with illustrations & selected contemporary critical responses
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“When blue-collar, white workers in middle America look at Donald Trump in his fill-fitting suit and baseball cap, with a physical image that is perhaps more like their own, they see a possibility that they could be him. Aside from his skin colour, Barack Obama, with his lean physique, good looks and charisma, hanging out with rock stars and movie stars, his life and what he stands for seems at a far remove. Except the reality is that he was raised without his father, cared for by his grandparents and moved around a lot as a child, meaning he has potentially much more in common with the Appalachian voters than Donald Trump. He lived and achieved the American Dream in arguably a more fundamental way than Trump did.”

TrumpAmerican DreamObamaPopulismSocial Mobility
Book:In America: Tales from Trump Country
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“I don’t really identify with America. I don’t really feel like an American or part of the American experience, and I don’t really feel like a member of the human race, to tell you the truth. I know I am, but I really don’t. All the definitions are there, but I don’t really feel a part of it. I think I have found a detached point of view, an ideal emotional detachment from the American experience and culture…”

AmericaAmerican DreamAlienationAmerican CultureEmotional Detachment
Author:George Carlin
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“Only 15-20% of Rossmoor houses are “originals”—structures unchanged from their construction in the 1950s. The land is what’s valuable. People knock down the gingerbread cottages to build Mediterranean villas with no yards between them. I don’t want our family’s house to suffer that transformation.”

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Book:Making Peace With Paradise: an autobiography of a California girl
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“There never was a real thanksgiving where the pilgrims welcomed the native americans to join them for a meal. And no amount of fairytale can change history. But what we can do is, start a tradition of real thanksgiving, by welcoming the persecuted and the discriminated into our hearts and accepting them as our family.”

American DreamAmerican HistoryRefugeesSystemic RacismIllegal ImmigrantsNative AmericansThanksgiving DinnerThanksgiving QuotesHate CrimesLand Of Liberty
Book:The Centurion Sermon: Mental Por El Mundo
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“Filthy-minded old bastard,' he muttered viciously under his breath. No wonder the world such a rotten place, rotten and filthy and cheap and smelly. Where is that place they talk of and paint nice pictures of and described in all the homey magazines? Where is that place with the clean, white cottages surrounding the new, red brick church with the clean, white steeple, were the families all have two children, one boy and one girl, and a shiny new car in the garage and a dog and a cat and life is like living in the land of the happily-ever-after? Surely it must be around here someplace, someplace in America. Or is it just that it's not for me? Maybe I dealt myself out, but what about that young kid on Burnside who was in the army and found it wasn't enough so that he has to keep proving to everyone who comes in for a cup of coffee that he was fighting for his country like the button on his shirt says he did because the army didn't do anything about his face to make him look more American? And what about the poor niggers on Jackson Street who can't find anything better to do than spit on the sidewalk and show me the way to Tokyo? They're on the outside looking in, just like that kid and just like me and just like everybody else I’ve ever seen or known. Even Mr. Carrick. Why isn't he in? Why is he on the outside squandering his goodness on outcasts like me? Maybe the answer is that there is no in. Maybe the whole damn country is pushing and shoving and screaming to get into some place that doesn't exist, because they don't know that the outside could be the inside if only they would stop all this pushing and shoving and screaming, and they haven't got enough sense to realise that. That makes sense. I've got the answer all figured out, simple and neat, and sensible.”

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Book:No-No Boy
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“This entire experience, although seemingly harmless in the grand cosmic scheme of life, was a perfect microcosm of the American dream. The good minority earned his rank by beating up the bad minority--a tale as old as the founding of this country. You try to gain as much proximity to whiteness and as much distance as you can from Blackness or the villain of the day, in order to become accepted by the mainstream.”

RacismMinoritiesImmigrantsBullyingAmerican DreamBlacknessWhitenessFitting In
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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