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American Quotes

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American Quotes

“Then again, a president wasn’t a lawyer or an accountant or a pilot, hired to carry out some narrow, specialized task. Mobilizing public opinion, shaping working coalitions - that was the job. Whether I liked it or not, people were moved by emotion, not facts. To elicit the best rather than the worst of those emotions, to buttress those better angels of our nature with reason and sound policy, to perform while still speaking the truth - that was the bar I needed to clear.”

ReasonFactsTruthPoliticsPresidentEmotionAmericanObama
Book:A Promised Land
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“When Huy was young, his classmates called him "wee wee” because of an unfortunate linguistic coincidence that shaped the part of him that constructs identity beneath a title. When he dwelled on the identity that his name began constructing for him in childhood, a loud American Schoolyard memory of boys and girls yelling "wee wee" at him was dominant, within a mental file full of similar confusion that came back to him as obnoxious, repetitive shaming.”

SchoolNamesChildhoodIdentityMemoryBullyingAmerican
Book:Handsome Vanilla
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“America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumberable editions of The Lamplighter (by Maria Susanna Cummins), and other books neither better nor worse? Worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the hundred thousand.”

HumorWomenAmerican
Author:Nathaniel Hawthorne
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“The death of Robert G. Ingersoll, on July 21, 1899, was one of the most widely -- noted events of that year in the civilized world. It was also one of the most widely and profoundly regretted, -- the most deeply deplored. Everywhere, the wisest knew (and the noblest felt) that the cause of humanity had met its greatest loss. To many thousands who realized the intellectual amplitude, the moral heroism and grandeur, the boundless generosity and sympathy, the tenderness and affection, of this incomparable man, his passing was as an intimate and bitter bereavement. Ingersoll was doubtless known, personally and otherwise, to more people than any other American who had not sat in the presidential chair; and, notwithstanding either the number or the wishes of his critics, his death probably brought genuine grief to more hearts than has that of any other individual in our history. Twice before, 'a Nation bowed and wept'; this time, a people.”

DeathHumanityPresidentGriefHistoryRegretHonorMoralityRespectPraiseGenerosityAdmirationSympathyTendernessHeroismBereavementGrandeurWisestAmericanIncomparableIngersollRobert G IngersollRobert IngersollDeplore
Book:Ingersoll: A Biographical Appreciation
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“As a matter of fact, with all his wit, humor, raillery, persiflage, he was the profoundest logician that ever appealed to the intellect of an American audience. There was logic even in his laughter. He passed the cup of mirth, and in its sparkling foam were found the gems of unanswerable truth. {Kittredge on the great Robert Ingersoll}”

HumorTruthLaughterRespectLogicPraiseProfoundIntellectWitAdmirationFactGemsAmericanMirthIngersollRobert G IngersollRobert IngersollRobert Green IngersollLogician
Book:Ingersoll: A Biographical Appreciation
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“L'umano desiderio di un principio, una parte di mezzo e una fine - e una fine adeguata, come grandezza, a quel principio e a quella parte di mezzo - si realizzava così completamente soltanto nella materia insegnata da Coleman all'Athena College. Ma al di fuori della tragedia classica del quinto secolo a.C. aspettarsi un compimento, per non dire una giusta e perfetta conclusione, significa, per un adulto, cullarsi in una stolta illusione.”

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Book:The Human Stain
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“Questo è tutto ciò che Faunia, nel suo tono freddo e distaccato, stava dicendo alla ragazza che nutriva il serpente: noi lasciamo una macchia, lasciamo una traccia, lasciamo la nostra impronta. Impurità, crudeltà, abuso, errore, escremento, seme: non c'è altro mezzo per essere qui. Nulla a che fare con la disobbedienza. Nulla a che fare con la grazia o la salvezza o la redenzione. E' in ognuno di noi. Insita. Inerente. Qualificante. La macchia che esiste prima del suo segno. Che esiste senza il segno. La macchia così intrinseca che non richiede un segno. La macchia che precede la disobbedienza, che comprende la disobbedienza e frustra ogni spiegazione o ogni comprensione. Ecco perché ogni purificazione è uno scherzo. Uno scherzo crudele, se è per questo. La fantasia della purezza è terrificante. E' folle. Cos'è questa brama di purificazione, se non l'aggiunta di nuove impurità? Della macchia Faunia diceva soltanto che era inevitabile. Questo, ovviamente, era il suo punto di vista: siamo creature irrimediabilmente macchiate. Rassegnata all'orribile, elementare imperfezione.”

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Book:The Human Stain
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“La performance sincera è tutto. Sincera e vuota, completamente vuota. La sincerità che va in tutte le direzioni. La sincerità che è peggio della falsità e l'innocenza che è peggio della corruzione. Tutta l'avidità che si nasconde sotto la sincerità. E sotto il gergo. Questo splendido linguaggio che hanno tutti - in cui sembrano credere -, queste chiacchiere sulla loro "mancanza di autovalorizzazione", quando l'unica cosa di cui sono sempre convinti, in realtà, è di avere diritto a tutto. L'impudenza la chiamano tenerezza, e la crudeltà è camuffata da "autostima" perduta. Anche Hitler mancava di autostima. Era il suo problema.”

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Book:The Human Stain
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“The human heart is first a human heart, then everything else - American, Christian, Asian, Jew, or whatever.”

LifeInspirationalLife LessonsHumanityWords Of WisdomBrainy QuotesHuman RightsHumanismWise QuotesHuman LifeHuman RaceService Of HumanityHumanistHumankindHumanity And SocietyGlobal CitizenAmericanOne Human RacePrinciples Of HumanismHumanist QuotesGlobal CitizenshipHumanistsPrincipia Humanitas
Book:We Are All Black: A Treatise on Racism
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“I used to walk out, at night, to the breakwater which divides the end of the harbor form the broad moor of the salt marsh. There was nothing to block the wind that had picked up speed and vigor from its Atlantic crossing. I’d study the stars in their brilliant blazing, the diaphanous swath of the milk Way, the distant glow of Boston backlighting the clouds on the horizon as if they’d been drawn there in smudgy charcoal. I felt, perhaps for the first time, particularly American, embedded in American history, here at the nation’s slender tip. Here our westering impulse, having flooded the continent and turned back, finds itself face to face with the originating Atlantic, November’s chill, salt expanses, what Hart Crane called the “unfettered leewardings,” here at the end of the world.”

HomeWisdomSpiritStarsNatureBeautySkyWindOceanAmerican
Book:Heaven's Coast: A Memoir
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“I attained a triumph so complete that it is now rare to meet an American with marks of small pox on his face... Benefits are valuable according to their duration and extent... but the benign remedy Vaccination saves millions of lives every century, like the [gift] of the sun, universal and everlasting. [Remark made near the end of his life]”

ScienceUniversalMedicineValueGiftTriumphRemedyEverlastingAmericanBenignBenefitRareSmallpoxVaccinationSaving Lives
Author:Benjamin Waterhouse
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“Having a date with someone other than your ex-wife after being a married man for more than twenty five years was an important occasion alright, but wearing a tie she bought with such strong emotional value attached to it was a form of cowardice, a subconscious reluctance to let go.”

LoveMarriageLetting GoRelationship QuotesDatingWake UpDivorceMoving ForwardAshamedJapanCowardCowardiceAmericanTokyoOnline DatingEx WifeExUndying LoveTieOld CoupleWhite Man And The Pachinko GirlShamefulnessAfter It EndsEmotional ValueLetting Of The Past
Book:The White Man and the Pachinko Girl
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“When Pope Pius XII died, LIFE magazine carried a picture of him in his private study kneeling before a black Christ. What was the source of their information? All white people who have studied history and geography know that Christ was a black man. Only the poor, brainwashed American Negro has been made to believe that Christ was white, to maneuver him into worshiping the white man. After becoming a Muslim in prison, I read almost everything I could put my hands on in the prison library. I began to think back on everything I had read and especially with the histories, I realized that nearly all of them read by the general public have been made into white histories. I found out that the history-whitening process either had left out great things that black men had done, or some of the great black men had gotten whitened.”

TruthChristHistoryRacismEqualityWhite SupremacyBlack HistoryAmericanBlack NationalismMalcolm X
Author:Malcolm X
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“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
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