America

Soy el cantor deAme¤  rica auto¤  ctono y salvaje; mi lira tiene un alma, mi canto un ideal. Mi verso no se mece colgado de un ramaje con un vaive¤  n pausado de hamaca tropical. I am the aboriginal and savage singer of America; my lyre has a soul, my song has an ideal. My poetry does not swing from the branches with the slow movement of a tropical hammock.

—Ch'in Chia   c.150

I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.

—Miller, Henry Valentine

I've come to thinkof Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.

—DeLillo, Don

America is the only country in history that miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to decadence without the usual interval of civilization.

—Clemenceau, Georges

If you're going to America, bring your own food.

—Lebowitz, Fran(ces Ann)

America came up with the idea of therapeutic avant- gardism, and built museums in its name. These temples stood on two pillars. The first was aestheticism† The second was the familiar one of social benefit.

—Hughes, Robert Studley Forrest

America cannot be an ostrich, with its head in the sand.

—Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow

La visio¤  n de una Ame¤  rica deslatinizada por propia voluntad, sin la extorsio¤  n de la conquista, y regenerada luego a imagen y semejanza del arquetipo del Norte, flota ya sobre los suen‹  os de muchos sinceros interesados por nuestro porvenir† Tenemos nuestra nordoman|¤a. Es necesario oponerle los l|¤mites que la razo¤  n y el sentimiento sen‹  alan. The vision of an America de-Latinized of its own will, without threat of conquest, and reconstituted in the image and likeness of the North, now looms in the nightmares of many who are genuinely concerned about our future† We have our USA-mania. It must be limited by the boundaries our reason and sentiment jointly dictate.

—Rodo¤  ,Jose¤   Enrique

   Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. America gets Hollywood.

—Jong, Erica ne¤  e Mann

O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed Hisgrace on thee. And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea.

—Bates, Katharine Lee

Early in life,Duveen†noticed that Europe had plenty of art and America had plenty of money, and his entire astonishing career was the product of that simple observation.

—Behrman, S(amuel) N(athaniel)

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir† America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.

—King, Martin LutherJr

America hasjust passedthrough†an eight-yearcoma in which slogans were confused with solutions and rhetoric passed for reality.

—Bentsen, Lloyd Millard,Jr

America has mitigated poverty by massively increasing pauperism.

—Wooldridge, Adrian

Clothes make the poor invisible too: America has the best-dressed poverty the world has ever known.

—Harrington, Michael

America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

—Ginsberg, Allen

America is a country of young men.

—Emerson, RalphWaldo

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestantswho live inthe center, inthe serene eye of the big wind.

—Mailer, Norman Kingsley

All America is an insane asylum.

—Pound, Ezra Loomis

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

—Updike,John Hoyer

America is God's Crucible, the great Melting Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming† God is making the American.

—Zangwill, Israel

At last America is in my view; a dreary waste of white barren sand, and melancholy, nodding pines. In the course of many miles, no cheerful cottage has blest my eyes. All seems dreary, savage and desert; and was it for this such sums of money, such streams of British blood have been lavished away? Oh, thou dear land, how dearly hast thou purchased this habitation for bears and wolves. Dearly has it been purchased, and at a price far dearer still it will be kept. My heart dies within me, while I view it.

—Schaw,Janet   b.c.1730

Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and America is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.

—Arnold, Matthew

America is now wholly given over to a död mob of scribbling women.

—Hawthorne, Nathaniel

America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humour, its music.How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.

—Rollins, Sonny (TheodoreWalter)

Everybody in America is so money-hungry. It's like a rat race and even when you win you're still a freaking rat.

—Tyson, Mike

We are becoming an economic colony. America isup for sale.One percent of Japan's manufacturing base is foreign-owned; 2 per cent of Germany's is; 3 per cent of France's.Ours is18 per cent and growing rapidly.

—Tsongas, Paul Efthemios

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

—Ginsberg, Allen

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

—Toynbee, Arnold Joseph

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has cummings thoroughly and perfectlyannihilated by that vast and painful process of Unthinking which may result in a minutebitof purelypersonal Feeling.Whichminutebit is Art. colossal faults, but onething 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.

—cummings, e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings

License my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below. O my America! my new-found-land, My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned.

—Donne,John

America no longer lives behind its great wall. Economically,Genghis Khan has arrived.

—Thurow, Lester C(arl)

People call meanidealist.That ishow Iknow that Iaman American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.

—Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow

Americaörather, the United Statesöseems to me to be the Jewamong the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm- hearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travellers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile.

—Ferber, Edna

In the springtime of America's cultural life, its itinerant folk artiststook totheroad to record the life and times of a people.Perhaps never again will we have an artistic record created in such direct and unassuming terms.

—Rockefeller,Winthrop

No young American in uniform should ever be held hostage to America's dependence on oil from the Middle East.

—Kerry,John F

   While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire.

—Jeffers, (John) Robinson

Michael Harrington†was America's leading socialist; a position, one might have thought, that almost epitomized marginality.

—The Economist

America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.

—Harding,Warren G(amaliel)

America the beautiful, Let me sing of thee; Burger King and Dairy Queen From sea to shining sea.

—Huxtable, Ada Louise ne¤  e Landman

In England, the system is benign and the people are hostile. In America, the people are friendlyöand the system is brutal!

—Crisp, Quentin

Our special task, as French Canadians, is to insert into America the spirit of Christian France.

—Bourassa, Henri

   America, thou half-brother of the world; With something good and bad of every land.

—Bailey, PhilipJames

I recalled when I worked in the woods and the bars of Madras,Oregon. That short-haired joy and roughnessö Americaöyour stupidity. I could almost love you again.

—Snyder, Gary Sherman

A pesar de que la m|¤a es historia, no la empezare¤   por el arca de Noe¤   y la genealog|¤a de sus ascendientes como acostumbraban hacerlo los antiguos historiadores espan‹  oles deAme¤  rica, que deben ser nuestros prototipos. I'm going to tell a true story, but I won't start with Noah's Ark and the genealogy of his forefathers, as is usual among the ancient Spanish historians of America, who we consider our prototypes.

—Echeverr|¤  a, Esteban

I don't think there's another person in America that wants to tell this story as much as I do.

—North, Oliver

Bodyand soul,Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

—Jordan,June

If you're bornin Americawith a black skin, you're bornin prison.

—Malcolm X originally Malcolm Little

You cannot conquer America.

—Pitt,William, 1st Earl of Chatham known as  the Elder

The breasts, the hallmark of our culture.You cannot sell anything in America without the breasts.

—Donahue, Phil

The boiling, churning caldron of America.

—Wright,James C,Jr

This cuisine here in America was certainly on a par with French cuisine.

—Chirac,Jacques Rene¤

   We declared war on America and Britain out of Our sincere desire to ensure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilisation of East Asia.

—Hirohito

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks in history.

—Le Carre¤  ,John pseudonym of  David John Moore Cornwell

The Europeans have scarcely visited any coast, but to gratify avarice, and extend corruption; to arrogate dominion without right, and practice cruelty without incentive† But there isreason to hope†that the light of the gospel will at last illuminate the sands of Africa, and the deserts of America, though its progress cannot but be slow when it is so much obstructed by the lives of Christians.

—Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson

   A few professional alienists understood his importance, but to most of the public he appeared as some kind of German sexologist, an exponent of free love who used big words to talk about dirty things. At least a decade would have to pass before Freud would have his revenge and seehisideas beginto destroysex in America forever.

—Doctorow, E(dgar) L(awrence)

I have had a drill to the tooth of America for the last two years.

—Clinton, Bill (William)

Nowhere have I encountered such a dull, monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak.

—Miller, Henry Valentine

The chief source of economic insecurity in America used to be growing old; now it's being born into or raised in a single-parent family.

—Ellwood, David T

Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.

—Gershwin, George

   It is clear that both England and America are now to be governed by the mob.

—Grenville, George

England and America are two countries divided by a common language.

—Shaw, George Bernard

I want every family in America to have a carpet on the floor and a picture on the wall. After bread, you've got to have a picture on the wall.

—Johnson, Lyndon B(aines) also called LBJ

It will be helpful in our mutual objective to allow every man in America to look hisneighbour inthe faceand see a manönot a colour.

—Stevenson, Adlai E(wing)

I don't care if it doesn't make a nickel. I just want every man, woman and child in America to see it!

—Goldwyn, Sam(uel) originally  Schmuel Gelbfisz

Let us pick up again these lost strands and weave them again into the fabric of America†sort out the music from the sounds and again respond to the trumpet and the steady drum.

—McCarthy, EugeneJ(oseph)

The future of America is based on one generation sacrificing for the next.

—Mayhew, Alex

He meant to gather for America an undreamed-of collection of art so great and complete that a trip to Europe would be superfluous.

—Saarinen, Aline Bernstein ne¤  e Loucheim

Four and twenty Yankees, feeling very dry, Went across the border to get a drink of rye. When the rye was opened, theYanks began to sing, 'God bless America, but God save the King!'

—Anonymous

Golf is to Fiji what cricket is to America.

—Singh,Vijay

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.

—Barzun,Jacques

[Charlton] Heston thinks America should arm its teachers; he seems to believe that schools would be safer if staff had the power to gun down children in their charge.

—Rushdie, (Ahmed) Salman

The second day of July1776 will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. It ought to be solemnised with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the otheröfrom this time forward, for ever more.

—Adams,John

Hoo-doo, which in America flowered in New Orleans, was an unorganized religion without ego-games or death worship.

—Reed, Ishmael Scott

What the horses o' Kansas think to-day, the horses of America will think tomorrow; an' Itell you that when the horses of America rise in their might, the day o'the Oppressor is ended. 472

—Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard

I feel displaced when I'm back in America, like a visitor. I feel like if I don't get a cup of tea I'm going to lose my mind.

—Hynde, Chrissie

   Si hay poes|¤a en nuestra Ame¤  rica, ella esta¤   en las cosas viejas: en Palenke y Uatla¤  n, en el indio legendario y el inca sensual y fino y en el gran Moctezuma de la silla de oro. Lo dema¤  s es tuyo, demo¤  crataWaltWhitman. If there is poetry in our America, it is in ancient items: in Palenke and Uatla¤  n, in the legendary Indian and in the sensuous and elegant Inca and the great Moctezuma. The rest is yours, democratic Walt Whitman.

—Dar|¤  o, Rube¤  n pseudonym of Fe¤  lixRube¤  nGarc|¤a Sarmiento

In America all too few blows are struck into flesh.We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that.We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell.

—Mailer, Norman Kingsley

In America, any boy may become president. I suppose that's just one of the risks that he takes.

—Stevenson, Adlai E(wing)

In America everything goes and nothing matters, while in Europe nothing goes and everything matters.

—Roth, Philip Milton

In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.

—Mailer, Norman Kingsley

In America journalism is apt to be regarded as an extension of history: in Britain, as an extension of conversation.

—Sampson, Anthony (Terrell Seward)

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent business man.

—Lewis, (Harry) Sinclair

In America there are two classes of travelöfirst class, and with children.

—Benchley, Robert Charles

Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.

—Lewis, (Harry) Sinclair

I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.

—Pitt,William, 1st Earl of Chatham known as  the Elder

Jazzcameto Americathreehundred years ago in chains.

—Whiteman, Paul

Whoever the last true cowboy in America turns out to be, he's likely to be an Indian. «

—Heat-Moon,William Least originally  WilliamTrogdon

Let's get America moving again.

—Anonymous

Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort oftheliving room.Vietnamwaslost inthe living rooms of America, not on the battlefields of Vietnam.

—McLuhan, (Herbert) Marshall

I take to be the central fact to man born in America† I spell it large because it comes large here. Large and without mercy.

—Olson, Charles

So we thinkof Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America, Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards.

—Mailer, Norman Kingsley

It's morning again in America.

—Anonymous

I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.

—Bellow, Saul

   'next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims'and so forth oh say can you see by the dawn's early my country 'tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb they sons acclaim you glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum

—cummings, e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings

   The tall, impossibly tall, incomparably tall, city shoulderingly upwards into hard sunlight leaned a little through the octaves of its parallel edges, leaningly strode upwards into firm, hard, snowy sunlight; the noises of America nearingly throbbed with smokes and hurrying dots which are men and which are women and which are things new and curious and hard and strange and vibrant and immense, lifting with a great ondulous stride firmly into immortal sunlight†

—cummings, e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings

   To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.

—McCarthy,Joseph R(aymond)

There is nothing left to envyabout America.

—Bragg, Melvyn Bragg, Baron

Nothing less will content me, than wholeAmerica.

—Burke, Edmund

Only in America could a Don King happen.

—King, Don

Patriotism is easy to understand in America. It means looking out for yourself while looking out for your country.

—Coolidge, (John) Calvin

Here, of all her cities, throbbed the true lifeöthe true power and spirit of America; gigantic, crude with the crudityof youth, disdaining rivalry; saneand healthyand vigorous; brutal in its ambition, arrogant in the new- found knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal of its wealth, infinite in its desires.

—Norris, Frank Benjamin Franklin

We have†come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.

—King, Martin LutherJr

The spirit that now resists your taxation in America is†the same spirit that established the great fundamental, essential maxim of your libertiesöthat no subject of England shall betaxed but byhis ownconsent. The glorious spirit of Whiggismanimates three million in America, who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as free men.

—Pitt,William, 1st Earl of Chatham known as  the Elder

There won't be any revolution in America† The people are all too clean.Theyspend all their time changing their shorts and washing themselves.You can't feel fierce and revolutionary in a bathroom.

—Linklater, Eric Robert

   My name is Behan, Brendan Behan, after Saint Brendan, who got into one of our little Irish boats called a curragh one day in the sixth century and sailed across the Atlantic and found America, and when he'd found it, like a sensiblemanheturned around and sailed back and left it where it fuckin' well was.

—Behan, Brendan Francis

Possibly the symbol for America is the Frontier† The corresponding symbol for England is the Island† The central symbol for Canada†is undoubtedly Survival, la Survivance.

—Atwood, Margaret Eleanor

The best thing about the violence in Northern Ireland is that it's all so ancient and honorable† The Irish are in the same terrific position as the Shiites in Lebanon, the peasants in El Salvador, the blacks in America, the Jews in Palestine, the Palestinians in Israel (and everybody everywhere, if you read your history)öenough barbarism has been visited on the Irish to excuse all barbarities by the Irish barbarians.

—O'Rourke, P(atrick) J(ake)

The mythical America†öthat marvellous, heroic, sentimental landöwas an object of faith. It challenged you to make the believer's leap over the rude facts at your feet.

—Raban,Jonathan

The youth of America istheir oldest tradition.It has been going on now for three hundred years.

—Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills

By the waters of Babylon we sit down and weep, when we think of thee,OAmerica!

—Walpole, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford

The true religion of America has always been America.

—Mailer, Norman Kingsley

It seems to be typical of life in America, where opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else on the globe, that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.

—Baldwin,James Arthur

Yesterday, December 7,1941öa date which will live in infamyöthe United States of America was suddenlyand deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

—Roosevelt, Franklin D(elano)

What America does best is to understand itself.What it does worst is to understand others.

—Fuentes, Carlos

In the United Statesthere ismorespace wherenobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.

—Stein, Gertrude

I can never suppose this country so far lost to all ideas of self-importance as to be willing to grant America independence; if that could ever be adopted, I shall despair of this country being ever preserved froma state George of inferiority, and consequently falling into a very low class among the European states.

—George III

Armed with a notebook, ingratiating grin and fine intelligence, he grew to be a most discerning witness of America's most distinctive rite, not just the election but the making of our presidents.

—NewYorkTimes