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Americans Quotes

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Americans Quotes

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

StrengthRacismPityContemptAfrican AmericansBlacksDualityAmericans
Book:The Souls of Black Folk
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“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
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“Americans aren't stupid. We are, however, preternaturally disposed to herd behavior (FOMO), with a strong desire to preserve a sense of individuality and maintain control over our decision making. We're joiners and don't want to be left out of fads; we're also fiercely independent and don't want to be told what to do.”

AddictionIndividualityAlcoholAmericansFomo
Book:Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol
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“The existence of the corporation, as we have it with us today, was never dreamed of by the fathers . . .The corporation of today has invaded every department of business, and it’s powerful but invisible hand is felt in almost all activities of life . . . The effect of this change upon the American people is radical and rapid. The individual is fast disappearing as a business factor and in his stead is this new device, the modern corporation . . . The influence of this change upon character cannot be overestimated. The businessman at one time gave his individuality, stamped his mental and moral characteristics upon the business he conducted . . . Today the business once transacted by individuals in every community is in the control of corporations, and many of the men who once conducted an independent business are gathered into the organization, and all personal identity, and all individualities lost.”

MoralityQuoteIndividualityAccountabilityAmericansCorporate AmericaFounding FathersCommunity EmpowermentCorporate PowerLa Follette
Author:Robert Marion La Follette
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“Gloria în țara aceasta începe cu publicity. Cineva se bucură de publicity doar când aduce profit altcuiva. Cine se bucură în America de faima națională? Cei care fac bani sau cei prin intermediul cărora alții fac bani. O regulă fără excepții. Banii! Faimă națională are un campion la box sau la fotbal, pentru că meciul cu participarea lui adună un milion de dolari. Faimă are o stea de cinema, pentru că notorietatea ei e de folos producătorului. Acesta poate să i-o ia în orice clipă, când are chef. Faimă au bandiții, pentru că de pe urma lor profită ziarele și pentru că de numele bandiților sunt legate cifre cu multe zerouri. Însă cine ar avea nevoie să-i facă celebri pe Thompson, Jackson, Wilson sau Adams, dacă oamenii aceștia construiesc doar utilaje, uzine electrice, poduri și sisteme de irigație? Patronilor nici nu le convine ca ei să ajungă celebri. Unei persoane celebre trebuie să-i dai un salariu mai mare.”

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Author:Ilf si Petrov
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“While Lee believed in slavery, he also profited from it far more than other army colonels. At the age of twenty-four, two years after graduating from West Point, Lee married Mary Custis, the only child of George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of George Washington. Custis earned his money through inheritance, and that inherited wealth derived from the work of enslaved labor. Enslaved labor created much of his wealth including the prestigious, Doric-columned Arlington House with its commanding view of the capital. Custis owned two other enslaved labor farms—Romancoke and White House. A year after marrying Mary Custis, Lee inherited enslaved workers from his mother’s estate. During his many years in the army, Lee hired out those enslaved workers and pocketed the profit, creating wealth. By the time he wrote his only will as a U.S. Army officer in 1846 as he headed to fight in Mexico, he estimated his net worth at $40,000 in stocks, bonds, and property, including enslaved workers, or more than $1.3 million today.”

WealthHistorySlaveryUs HistoryAmericansSlave LaborInherited Wealth
Book:Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause
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“When bad news is riding high and despair in fashion, when loud mouths and corruption seem to own center stage, when some keep crying that the country is going to the dogs, remember it’s always been going to the dogs in the eyes of some, and that 90 percent, or more, of the people are good people, generous-hearted, law-abiding, good citizens who get to work on time, do a good job, love their country, pay their taxes, care about their neighbors, care about their children’s education, and believe, rightly, as you do, in the ideals upon which our way of life is founded.”

AmericaUnited StatesCitizensGoodnessUsaGood PeopleBad NewsAmericansUsAmerican Ideals
Book:The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For
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“Father said he wasn’t worried. He said Americans are like this, brittle with privilege. Sometimes anger robs them of their senses and they make bad decisions, but in a way this was really just another testament to American greatness—how adept the United States was at surviving its endless self-inflicted wounds. We live in a good country, he said, and it will be good again.”

GreatnessGoodnessAngerPrivilegeAmericansBad DecisionsAmerican Greatness
Book:A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers
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“It is a fact increasingly manifest that presentation of real news has sharpened the minds and the judgment of men and women everywhere in these days of real public discussion. We Americans begin to know the difference between the truth on the one side and the falsehood on the other, no matter how often the falsehood is iterated and reiterated. Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.”

TruthLiesAmericansFake NewsFalsehoodsReal News
Author:Franklin D. Roosevelt
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“Middle-class Americans, like myself and my fellow seekers, have been raised with the old-time Protestant expectation that hard work will be rewarded with material comfort and security. This has never been true of the working class, most of which toils away at wages incommensurate with the effort required. And now, the sociologists agree, it is increasingly untrue of the educated middle class that stocks our corporate bureaucracies.”

WorkEffortRewardsEmploymentMiddle ClassWorking ClassWorkingAmericansProtestant Work Ethic
Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
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“If this isn't the essential American story, I don't know what is: Guy hews a life out of nothing, by working every waking moment, with no education, no government help, no external advantages whatsoever, and no ulterior motive. What did he want? A place where his kids could grow up, with less fear and more material comforts.”

LifeAmericaWorkFamilyComfortSafetyImmigrantsAmerican DreamFamily LifeAmericans
Book:The Braindead Megaphone
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“As I write this, we are in an especially divisive era in American politics. There are questions about who holds power, who abuses it, who profits from it, and at what cost to our democracy. It is a time of questions about what makes us American, of shifting identities, inclusion and exclusion, protest, civil and human rights, the strength of our compassion versus the weakness of our fears, and the seductive lure of a mythic "great" past that never was versus the need for the consciousness and responsibility necessary if we are truly to live up to the rich promise of "We the People." We are a country built by immigrants, dreams, daring, and opportunity. We are a country built by the horrors of slavery and genocide, the injustice of racism and exclusion. These realities exist side by side. It is our past and present. The future is unwritten. This is a book about ghosts. For we live in a haunted house.”

AmericaPastFutureInspirational QuotePresentAmericans
Book:Before the Devil Breaks You
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“The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them.”

DiversityMulticulturalismWriters And WritingAmericansBlack History MonthPoets And PoetryContemporary PoetryMulticulturalismoAmerican IdentityNational Poetry MonthWorld Poetry DayNational History DayPoem In Your Pocket DayAmerican PoetsContemporary PoetsContemporary Authors
Book:The American Poet Who Went Home Again
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“If immigrants ain't real Americans, Neither is our revered Lady Liberty. She too came from a distant land, Yet today she is the American epitome... Though I belong to the whole wide world, Land of Lady Liberty is my home country. A nation's character isn't defined by rigidity, It is defined by a hearty unity in diversity.”

DiversityImmigrantsInclusionAmerican DreamPursuit Of HappinessAmericansNation BuildingCultural DiversityLand Of LibertyBuild Back Better
Book:Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World
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“Home Country (The Sonnet) If immigrants ain't real Americans, Neither is our revered Lady Liberty. She too came from a distant land, Yet today she is the American epitome. If even this doesn't broaden your heart, What about the founders of our history! All of them were textbook immigrants, What white supremacists cuss as refugee. Any land that holds potential for ascension, Draws the repressed souls of humanity. Though I belong to the whole wide world, Land of Lady Liberty is my home country. A nation's character isn't defined by rigidity, It is defined by a hearty unity in diversity.”

DiversityImmigrantsInclusionPursuit Of HappinessSonnetAmericansNation BuildingCultural DiversityBook Of PoemsLand Of Liberty
Book:Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World
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“He had complicated our task of being pleasant dinner companions by mentioning famine, something that Americans had never known. The word could only conjure otherworldly landscapes of the skeletal dead, which was not the spectral image we wanted to present, for what one should never do was to require other people to imagine they were just like one of us. Spiritual teleportation unsettled most people, who, if they thought of others at all, preferred to think that others were just like them or could be just like them.”

DeathEmpathySympathyFamineAmericans
Book:The Sympathizer
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“After listening to a lot of these stories, I began to think that American loneliness is a completely different creature from anything we experience in this country, and it made me glad I was born Japanese. The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different from the sort you know you'll get through if you just hang in there.”

LifeStruggleLonelinessJapanAmericans
Book:In the Miso Soup
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