American Life Quotes - Page 6

• I certainly do have this feeling of affection for the absolute sense of intellectual freedom that exists as a live nerve, a live wire, right through the center of American life.

  Norman Mailer

  Freedom, Feelings, Intellectual

  "Mailer Tells a Lot. Not All, but a Lot.; His Longest Love Affair Is With the U.S." by Bernard Weinraub, www.nytimes.com. October 4, 2000.

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• To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any church, is an outrage against the liberty of conscience, which is one of the foundations of American life.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Presidential, Church, Liberty

  Theodore Roosevelt (1908). “Americanism in Religion”

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• The reason given by the President in asking Congress to declare war against Germany is that the German government has declared certain war zones, within which, by the use of submarines, she sinks, without notice, American ships and destroys American lives.

  George W. Norris

  War, Government, President

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• Saigon, U.S.A. aptly documents the birth of a new American community, uprooted in the aftermath of war and forever torn apart by the wounds of the past, yet one capable of healing against all odds. An engrossing yet succinct film that captures not only a major incident in Vietnamese American life, but also an important chapter of American history. A profound film that manages to confront us with the deepest sorrow while allowing us to be hopeful about what it means to be human.

  Nguyen Qui Duc

  War, Healing, Mean

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• I feel like one of the things that is central to American life is the religious experience, and I think that the experience of being Muslim in America is as valid and as important a perspective on the religious experience of America as evangelical Christianity or Judaism - whatever it may be.

  Ayad Akhtar

  Religious, Thinking, America

  "Actor-writer Ayad Akhtar". "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. April 26, 2012.

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• The unions are the first feeble effort to conquer the industrial jungle for democratic life. They may not succeed, but if they don't their failure will be a tragedy for civilization, a loss of cooperative effort, a baulking of energy, and the fixing in American life of a class-structure.

  Walter Lippmann

  Loss, Civilization, Class

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest”

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• American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.

  George Santayana

  Powerful, America, Optimism

  George Santayana (1921). “Character & Opinion in the United States: With Reminiscences of William James and Josiah Royce and Academic Life in America”

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• The best thing about being President is that it gets you out of American life. I don't know what the theory is behind this, but it is a fact. The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off to a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him.

  Russell Baker

  President, Firsts, Facts

  Russell Baker (1983). “So This Is Depravity”, Pocket Books

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• I know in an existential sense that life can change on a dime ... something has instantly and inexorably changed in American life.

  John Lahr

  Dimes, Existential, Changed

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• It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture.

  Hans Hofmann

  Spiritual, Art, Self

  "Search for the Real: And Other Essays". Book by Hans Hofmann. "Painting and Culture", p. 56, 1948.

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• The trouble with me is that I'm an outsider. And that's a very hard thing to be in American life.

  Jackie Kennedy

  Outsiders, Trouble, Hard

  "The Unknown Wisdom of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis" edited by Bill Adler, 1994.

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• We have to be honest, we have to be truthful and speak to the one dirty secret in American life, and that is racism.

  Henry Cisneros

  Dirty, Racism, Secret

  1993 In US News and World Report, 19 Apr.

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• 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.

  Joseph McCarthy

  Cities, Nerves, Asceticism

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• Serious skeptics, true believers, and seekers of every stripe will want to read Mitch Horowitz's vibrant, probing, and richly researched account of the impact of the positive-thinking movement on every aspect of American life today. Filled with a cast of remarkable characters and many lively tales, One Simple Idea is a readable, responsible examination of the limits and possibilities of mind-power as a source of constructive transformation.

  Judith Viorst

  Character, Positive Thinking, Simple

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• Many things about American life, that even secular people consider good, have flowed from the presence of a robust, resilient institutional Christianity.

  Ross Douthat

  People, Christianity, Resilient

  Source: www.christianpost.com

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• Ralph Ellison is a classic work of erudition, grace, and elegance. Rampersad offers us an Ellison whose gifts and warts orbit the same universe of creative genius. Like Ellison's work, Rampersad's text wrestles eloquently with difficult truths about race, politics, and American life.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Race, Creative, Orbit

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• American Lives Are Not More Important Than Other People's Lives

  Bob Avakian

  People, Important

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• If there were 10,000 U.S. forces ashore [in Lebanon], authorized to move about, there would be less risk to American lives than there is with an immobile force of 1,300.

  George Will

  Peace, War, Moving

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• We are a people of many races, many faiths, creeds, and religions. I do not think that the men who made the Constitution forbade the establishment of a State church because they were opposed to religion. They knew that the introduction of religious differences into American life would undermine the democratic foundations of this country. What holds for adults holds even more for children, sensitive and conscious of differences. I certainly hope that the Board of Education will think very, very seriously before it introduces this division and antagonism in our public schools.

  John Dewey

  Country, Religious, Children

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• A trillion dollars spent, 2,000 American lives lost - Afghanistan is the longest war in American history. But you don't hear a word about it.

  Michael Baumgartner

  War, Dollars, American History

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• I grew up in the American South and came of age in the 1960s, an incredibly turbulent time. It was as if the seams of American life were being ripped apart with riots and protests.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Age, Grew Up, Turbulent Times

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• There was never a promise that race relations in America would be entirely resolved during my presidency or anybody's presidency. I mean, this has been a running thread - and - and fault line in American life and American politics since its founding.

  Barack Obama

  Running, Mean, Race

  Interview with Jon Sopel on BBC, www.bbc.com. July 24, 2015.

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• There is a need for heroism in American life today.

  Vicki Baum

  Life, Time, America

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• As the United States drifts from its Judeo-Christian foundation and as the state becomes ever more pervasive in American life, government could ultimately insist on full allegiance from the people, an allegiance belonging only to God.

  H. Wayne House

  Christian, Religious, Government

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• Today's secular libertarians, who want to remove biblical religion from public life, have trouble making sense of the civil rights movement because it was so clearly a religiously inspired movement that entered the public arena and made a major difference in American life.

  Bruce L. Shelley

  Christian, Religious, Biblical

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