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You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
-John Ciardi
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America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
-Georges Clemenceau
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The business of America is business and the chief ideal of the American people is idealism.
-Calvin Coolidge
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At least the Pilgrim Fathers used to shoot Indians: the Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks.
-e. e. (Edward Estlin) cummings
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America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still.
-e. e. (Edward Estlin) cummings
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The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.
-Robertson Davies
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The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. . . . Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. . . . An immigrant when he first arrives . . . no sooner breathes our air than he forms new schemes, and embarks in designs he never would have thought of in his own country. . . . He begins to feel the effects of a sort of resurrection; hitherto he had not lived, but simply vegetated; he now feels himself a man . . . Judge what an alteration there must arise in the mind and thoughts of this man; . . . his heart involuntarily swells and glows; this first swell inspires him with those new thoughts which constitute an American.
-Hector St. John De Crevecoeur
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America is the world's living myth. There's no sense of wrong when you kill an American or blame America for some local disaster. This is our function, to be character types, to embody recurring themes that people can use to comfort themselves, justify themselves and so on. We're here to accommodate. Whatever people need, we provide. A myth is a useful thing.
-Don Delillo
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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.
-Don Delillo
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If its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body, they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists, at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.
-Charles Dickens
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Americans cannot realize how many chances for mental improvement they lose by their inveterate habit of keeping six conversations when there are twelve in the room.
-Ernest Dimnet
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The main village, which includes the Railroad station, is built around a village green or informal park. In the park will be benches, a bandstand, drinking fountain, trees, and shrubs. It will be a place for people to sit and rest; mothers and grandmothers can watch over small children at play. I want it to be very relaxing, cool, and inviting. Around the park will be built the town. At one end will be the Railroad Station; at the other end, the Town Hall. The Hall will be built to represent a Town Hall, but actually we will use it as our administration building. It will be the headquarters of the entire project. Adjoining the Town hall will be the Fire and Police Stations. The Fire Station will contain practical fire apparatus, scaled down. The police station will also be put to practical use. Here the visitors will report all violations, lost articles, lost kids, etc. In it we could have a little jail where the kids could look in. We might even have characters in it.
-Walt Disney
from a memo describing plans for Disneyland
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We're sleeping and there's a bunch of creepy old dudes molesting us.
-James Dye
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I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.
-Bob Dylan
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Americans usually believe that nothing is impossible.
-Lawrence S. Eagleburger
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There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.
-Umberto Eco
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The ideology of this America wants to establish reassurance through Imitation. But profit defeats ideology, because the consumers want to be thrilled not only by the guarantee of the Good but also by the shudder of the Bad.
-Umberto Eco
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The standardized American is largely a myth created not least by Americans themselves.
-Irwin Edman
The Uses of Philosophy
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The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being.
-Albert Einstein
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Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.
-Dwight D Eisenhower
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Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels -- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
-Dwight D Eisenhower
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I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem -- and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
-Dwight D Eisenhower
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Only Americans can hurt America.
-Dwight D Eisenhower
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There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure.
-Dwight D Eisenhower
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Books about America
