america

1.

America is the best half-educated country in the world.

- Butler, Nicholas

2.

The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is the fact that we tolerate conditions that are, from a negative point of view, intolerable. What the foreigner finds most objectionable in American life is its lack of basic comfort. No nation with any sense of material well-being would endure the food we eat, the cramped apartments we live in, the noise, the traffic, the crowded subways and buses. American life, in large cities, is a perpetual assault on the senses and the nerves; it is out of asceticism, out of unworldliness, precisely, that we bear it.

- Mccarthy, Mary

3.

I think it's only in a crisis that Americans see other people. It has to be an American crisis, of course. If two countries fight that do not supply the Americans with some precious commodity, then the education of the public does not take place. But when the dictator falls, when the oil is threatened, then you turn on the television and they tell you where the country is, what the language is, how to pronounce the names of the leaders, what the religion is all about, and maybe you can cut out recipes in the newspaper of Persian dishes.

- Delillo, Don

4.

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered... deeply, ...finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

- George Washington

5.

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

- Albert Einstein

6.

Advertising is the genie which is transforming America into a place of comfort, luxury and ease for millions.

- White, William Allen

7.

The white youth of today have begun to react to the fact that the American Way of Life is a fossil of history. What do they care if their old baldheaded and crew-cut elders don't dig their caveman mops? They couldn't care less about the old, stiff-assed honkies who don't like their new dances: Frog, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi. All they know is that it feels good to swing to way-out body-rhythms instead of dragging across the dance floor like zombies to the dead beat of mind-smothered Mickey Mouse music.

- Cleaver, Eldridge

8.

America has run the world for at least the past 50 years, and when you're at the top that long, you forget what it's like in the valley. There are 5+ billion people out there now who are willing to study harder, work harder for less money and be more industrious than we are. And we're linked to them by technology. With telecommunications, you can have your bookkeeping done in Madra, India, for less than it costs here. Today technology can replace whole new industries, so you have to stay flexible. To survive today, you have to be able to walk on quicksand and dance with electrons.

- Ogden, Frank

9.

The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.

- Mumford, Lewis

10.

America: the only country in the world where failing to promote yourself is regarded as being arrogant.

- Garry Trudeau

11.

The improved American highway system isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson's nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.

- Boorstin, Daniel J.

12.

The interesting and inspiring thing about America is that she asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask for humanity itself.

- Wilson, Woodrow T.

13.

On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband's dinners.

- Wilde, Oscar

14.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

- Gershwin, George

15.

America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair.

- Arnold Toynbee

16.

We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.

- Oscar Wilde

17.

Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game -- it, and high taxes.

- Will Rogers

18.

America represents something universal in the human spirit. I received a letter not long ago from a man who said,'You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won't become a German or a Turk.'But then he added,'Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.'

- Ronald Reagan

19.

The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so.

- Martineau, Harriet

20.

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

- Thurber, James