Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy --
the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked
by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt
America has never been united by blood or birth or soil.
We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds,
lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens.
Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them.
And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.
--George W. Bush
Okay, conservatives have changed my mind. Allowing gay marriage, I have been persuaded,
will destroy the family, weaken Western civilization, turn America into Sodom and Gomorrah,
increase the trade deficit with Japan, endanger the family farm and promote tooth decay.
The impeccable logic of conservative opponents is simply too powerful to deny.
--Stephen Chapman, Chicago Tribune columnist
I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he has
read of the effects of smoking that he gave up reading.
--Lord Conesford
Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America ---
that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement.
--Thomas Wolfe You Can't Go Home Again
I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason,
I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
--James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.
--William J. Clinton --Bill Clinton
The Declaration of Independence -- of the 13 United States of America
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form,
as them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
--Declaration of Independence
You, the Spirit of the Settlement! ... Not understand that America is God's crucible,
the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!
Here, you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island,
here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and
your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries...
--Israel Zangwill The Melting Pot
The entire essence of America is the hope to first make money ---
then make money with money --then make lots of money with lots of money.
--Paul Erdman
Beer commercials are so patriotic: 'Made the American Way.' What does that have to
do with America? Is that what America stands for? Feeling sluggish and urinating frequently?
--Evelyn Waugh
The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy
the Americans freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of his plight.
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy Columbia University, 10 days before his assassination
People are unhappy (and neurotic) in America today because advertising has
caused them to have unrealistic expectations of life, themselves, their jobs and
the Fantasyland products and services that are constantly pushed on them.
--Curtis Smale
|