5,300 Quotes About America

Until we came to Baker &Inglis my friends and I had always felt completely American. But now the Bracelets’ upturned noses suggested that there was another America to which we could never gain admittance. All of a sudden America wasn’t about hamburgers and hot rods anymore. It was about the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. It was about something that had happened for two minutes four hundred years ago, instead of everything that had happened since. Instead of everything that was happening now!

My first interviewer, my very first, photographed me. I told him that he was wasting a plate, but he went on and wasted three. Why did he do it? If I were a very beautiful woman I could understand it, though I think it would be a mistake to photograph Venus herself on the gangway of a steamer at eight o'clock in the morning in a downpour of rain.

A walking stick is no real use except to a lame man. The walker does not push himself along with it. He does not, when he sets out from home, expect to meet any one whom he wants to hit.

America where thereis the little old ramshackle victoria in the south,where cigars are smoked on the street in the north;where there are no proof-readers, no silkworms, no digressions;the wild man's land; grassless, linksless, languageless country inwhich letters are writtennot in Spanish, not in Greek, not in Latin, not in shorthand,but in plain American which cats and dogs can read!

One problem with democracy as it plays in our country is that the majority rules so hard; we seem bent on dividing all things into a contest of Win and Lose, and declaring that the Losers are losers. Nearly half of us are routinely asked to disappear while the slim majority works its will. But the playing field is the planet earth, and I for one have no place else to go.

But the uncertainty of Soli's happiness remained, a permanent raised eyebrow on the face of the great green woman she'd equated with America, the supposed mother of exiles.

America had been a nation of immigrants. Whether their ancestors had immigrated by choice or by force, that was not the problem, the problem was the cause of identity against many newcomers that included Muslims who were viewed with suspicion, many as enemies of America. But this was only a partial truth, if you believe me. Many shared an American dream and wanted to contribute to the country with their services.

Moving forward: It takes courage and faith to build a nation. Consideration for the young and the poor. Hope for the future.

At this time the country needs to regain equilibrium and direction. It needs to recover the memory of the best it has done, and then try to do it all better.