American Life Quotes:

The actual God of many Americans... is simply the current of American life.

- Charles Horton Cooley

topic: Currents, American Life

Race has no place in American life or law.

- John F. Kennedy

source: Civil Rights Address, delivered 11 June 1963

topic: Race, Law, American Life

Envy is the central fact of American life.

- Gore Vidal

source: Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.43, Univ. Press of Mississippi

topic: Envy, Facts, American Life

Together we can save American lives, American jobs, and American futures.

- Donald Trump

source: Donald Trump's immigration speech in Phoenix, Arizona, www.nytimes.com. September 1, 2016.

topic: Jobs, Together We Can, American Life, American Jobs

Our presence in Afghanistan is not worth the price of any more American lives or treasure.

- Camille Paglia

topic: Treasure, Afghanistan, American Life, Afghan

[last words] What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night.

- Crowfoot

source: "Aging in the Modern World: Selections from the Literature of Aging for Pleasure and Instruction". Book by ‎Clark Tibbitts, p. 222, 1957.

topic: Sunset, Native American, Firefly, Indian Tribes, Spiritual Indian

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.

- Crowfoot

topic: Life, Running, Nature, Indian Tribes, Indian Wisdom

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide

- Tecumseh

source: "A Sourcebook for Earth's Community of Religions". Book by Joel Diederik Beversluis, 1993.

topic: Song, Love You, Heart, Indian Tribes, Indian Wisdom

Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.

- Tecumseh

source: "A Sourcebook for Earth's Community of Religions". Book by Joel Diederik Beversluis, 1993.

topic: Love You, Perfect, Love Your Life, Indian, Indian Tribes

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

- Chief Seattle

topic: Life, Lonely, Nature, Indian, Inspirational Earth

One of the manifestations of depression for me is that I lose my will. And I thereby lose my ability to focus. I don't think I'll ever have the day-to-day consistency in my performance that something like This American Life has. If I'm not depressed and I'm on and I can focus and I can think through something hard and without interruption and without existential emptiness that comes from depression, that gives me - not mania. But I exalt. I exalt in not being depressed.

- Rachel Maddow

topic: Thinking, Giving, Focus, Being Depressed, Mania

The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think.

- William O. Douglas

topic: Thinking, America, People, Unorthodox, American Life

In the decade of the 1980s, a massive and comprehensive study of religion in American life was undertaken by the Gallup organization. The results of the study were as terrifying as they were revealing. Americans, even evangelical Americans, are woefully ignorant of the content of Scripture and even more ignorant of the history of Christianity and classical Christian theology.

- R. C. Sproul

source: R. C. Sproul (2011). “Essential Truths of the Christian Faith”, p.11, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

topic: Christian, Organization, Ignorant, Christian Theology, American Life

Vanity Fair has but two major articles in its editorial creed: first, to believe in the progress and promise of American life, and, second, to chronicle that progress cheerfully, truthfully, and entertainingly.

- Frank Crowninshield

topic: Believe, Vanity, Two, Vanity Fair, American Life

English is the key to full participation in the opportunities of American life.

- S. I. Hayakawa

topic: Opportunity, Keys, Participation, American Life

If the Declaration of Independence states our creed, there can be no right to abortion, since it means denying the most fundamental right of all to the unborn child, the right to life.

- Alan Keyes

topic: Children, Mean, Abortion, Right To Life, Creator God

If you read the biographies of people who have written good books, you often see the point where they suddenly come into themselves, and those weeks in the spring of 1997 were when I came into myself as a writer. They feel like some of the best weeks of writing I’ll ever have. The discovery that I could write better about something as trivial as an ordinary family dinner than I could about the exploding prison population of the United States, and the corporatization of American life, and all the other things I’d been trying to do, was a real revelation.

- Jonathan Franzen

topic: Spring, Real, Book, Prison Population, American Life

That does not mean we won't experience the tragedy of the loss of some American lives. We will have an opportunity to instill a democracy in Iraq which will be an example and perhaps force other nations in that region to move in the same direction.

- John McCain

source: "McCain: We will win this conflict easily". Interview With Wolf Blitzer, www.cnn.com. January 22, 2003.

topic: Moving, Mean, Loss, American Life

Hughes' debut novel, At Dawn, follows a former All-American wrestler, and is there any better metaphor for contemporary American life? We're all wrestling, tussling with the economy, no jobs, doing the best we can. Hughes doesn't flinch from the tough existential questions. He embraces them.

- Joshua Mohr

topic: Jobs, Wrestling, Dawn, American Life

As Americans, we want peace - we work and sacrifice for peace. But there can be no peace if our security depends on the will and whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. I'm not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein.

- George W. Bush

topic: Sacrifice, Hussein, Want, American Life

Here, the churches seemed to shrink away into eroding corners. They seem to have ceased to be essential parts of American life. They no longer give life. It is the huge buildings of commerce and trade which now align the people to attention. These in their massive manner of steel and stone say, Come unto me all ye who labor, and we will give you work.

- Sean O'Casey

topic: Work, People, Giving, American Life

There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.

- Norman Mailer

source: 1966 Cannibals and Christians,'My Hope For America'.

topic: Freedom, America, Long, American Life

Yale is a crucible in American life for the accommodation of intellectual achievement, of wisdom, of refinement, with the democratic ideals of openness, of social justice and of equal opportunity.

- Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.

topic: Opportunity, Yale, Justice, Accommodations, Equal Opportunity

I don't like to lose, and that isn't so much because it is just a football game, but because defeat means the failure to reach your objective.

- Knute Rockne

topic: Sports, Football, Mean, Football Game, Pro Football

The politics of that year [2004] are old now, but the problem remains the same, the real culture clash of American life. It's between the essence of fundamentalism - paternalism, authority, and charity - and the messy imperatives of democracy, "the din of the vox populi" once derided by Abram Vereide. It's the difference between false unity, preached from above, and real solidarity, pledged between brothers and sisters - the kinds who are always bickering.

- Jeff Sharlet

topic: Brother, Real, Years, Vox Populi, Paternalism

Senator Allen has long been a leader on competitiveness issues in the Senate and as governor of Virginia. His announcement of the Competitiveness Caucus comes as great news to the nation's manufacturers. We support every item on this agenda and will work with Senator Allen and others to make it a reality. The time has come for Congress to recognize the vital role manufacturing plays in American life and do what it can to strengthen our ability to compete in the global marketplace.

- John Engler

topic: Reality, Virginia, Play, Items, Caucus

Hurricane Katrina, coupled with Hurricane Rita, which came promptly on Katrina's heels, claimed more than 1,200 American lives. Together, they caused more than $200 billion in damage.

- Ellen Tauscher

topic: Together, Damage, Hurricanes, Hurricane Katrina, Life Together

Buffett's uncommon urge to chronicle made him a unique character in American life, not only a great capitalist but the Great Explainer of American capitalism. He taught a generation how to think about business, and he showed that securities were not just tokens like the Monopoly flatiron, and that investing need not be a game of chance. It was also a logical, commonsensical enterprise, like the tangible businesses beneath. He stripped Wall Street of its mystery and rejoined it to Main Street -- a mythical or disappearing place, perhaps, but one that is comprehensible to the ordinary American.

- Roger Lowenstein

source: Roger Lowenstein (2013). “Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist”, p.425, Random House

topic: Wall, Character, Thinking, Buffett, Main Street

When I left the theater… I was thinking that I’d seen a classic of American dance. It confers a mythic dimension on ordinary aspects of our daily lives – it’s unfaked folk art. The dancers, crashing wave upon wave into those falls, have a happy insane spirit that recalls a unique moment in American life – the time we did the school play or we were ready to drown at a swimming meet. The last time most of us were happy in that way.

- Arlene Croce

topic: Art, Fall, School, Folk Art, Crashing Waves

The most successful people in American life are those that have had horrific failures and have come back, done it again and again until they got it right, whether it's Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.

- Frank Luntz

source: "Frank Luntz: How To 'Win' With Smart Messaging". Interview with Neal Conan, www-s4.npr.org. March 8, 2011.

topic: Jobs, Successful, People, Horrific, Warren Buffet

I think we're going to care more about Americans than Africans. I don't think that's ever going to go away, and I don't think it's ever going to go away that people care more about their families than strangers, and their communities over other communities. But I think it would transform the world in such a good way if we could just acknowledge, at least intellectually, that an African life and an American life are the same.

- Paul Bloom

source: "Paul Bloom: The Trouble With Empathy". Interview with Allyson Kirkpatrick, www.guernicamag.com. February 1, 2016.

topic: Thinking, People, Community, American Life

You know, I began my life as a creative person writing true things for magazines and telling some very honest, straightforward personal essaying for This American Life, but until someone forces you, with a deadline, to really observe your life - unless you're motivated to do it yourself - there's so many stories that you miss.

- John Hodgman

source: Interview with Greg Hunter, therumpus.net. October 21, 2013.

topic: Writing, Creative, Missing, American Life, True Things

It's like our go-to notion of innocent and secure mythology of American life. I was always amazed when people would come up to me and say that 'Far from Heaven' was exactly what it was like back then. [laughs] I was so disinterested in what it was 'really like' in the 1950s when I was putting the film together, I was only interested in what it was like in movies.

- Todd Haynes

source: Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

topic: People, Laughing, Heaven, American Life

Yes, too much emphasis is put on outward physical attributes in every area of American life.

- Gloria Gaynor

topic: Too Much, Attributes, Emphasis, American Life

The individualism of American life, to our glory and despair, creates anger and encourages its release; for when everything is possible, limitations are irksome. When the desires of the self come first, the needs of others are annoying. When we think we deserve it all, reaping only a portion can enrage.

- Carol Tavris

source: Carol Tavris (1989). “Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

topic: Thinking, Self, Despair, American Life

The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.

- Ida B. Wells

source: Ida B. Wells-Barnett (2014). “On Lynchings”, p.26, Courier Corporation

topic: Running, Home, Men, Outraged, American Life

The great scandal of American life is that we pay for German levels of government without enjoying the related benefits.

- Kevin D. Williamson

topic: Government, Benefits, Levels, American Life

What I'm OK with is protecting the American people. What I'm OK with is, when people have the intent to come to this country and take American lives, that we are prepared to do what's necessary to gain the information to protect the people of this country.

- Mike Pence

source: "The Republican Ticket: Trump and Pence". "60 Minutes" with Lesley Stahl, www.cbsnews.com. July 17, 2016.

topic: Country, People, Information, American Life

Enhanced interrogation gleaned information that saved American lives and - I was informed - prevented incoming terrorist attacks on this country from being successful.

- Mike Pence

source: "The Republican Ticket: Trump and Pence". Interview with Lesley Stahl, www.cbsnews.com. July 17, 2016.

topic: Country, Successful, Information, Interrogation, American Life

If honesty were suddenly introduced into American life, the whole system would collapse.

- George Carlin

source: "George Carlin: You Are All Diseased". TV Special, www.imdb.com. 1999.

topic: Honesty, Philosophy, Collapse, American Life

An Atlas, whose back is bowed and whose hands are busy holding up the world, has no arms to lift to deal with his own defense. Increase his burdens and you will crush him...This is our present posture...This suggestions I make...would...conserve American lives for American ends.

- Murray Rothbard

topic: Crush, War, Hands, American Life

The same tools we need to use to keep this country safe by bringing terrorists to justice, because I guarantee you, if they have the opportunity and the means, they will take American lives.

- Todd Tiahrt

topic: Country, Mean, Opportunity, American Life

The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable.

- Mary McCarthy

topic: Character, Views, Materialistic, Large Cities, American Life

Immigration law doesn't exist for the purpose of keeping criminals out. It exists to protect all aspects of American life. The work site, the welfare office, the education system, and everything else.

- Donald Trump

source: Donald Trump's Immigration Speech in Phoenix, www.latimes.com. August 31, 2016.

topic: Law, Office, Criminals, American Life, Immigration Laws

There is the issue of security. Countless innocent American lives have been stolen because our politicians have failed in their duty to secure our borders and enforce our laws like they have to be enforced.

- Donald Trump

source: "Transcript of Donald Trump's Immigration Speech" by Travis Dove, www.nytimes.com. September 1, 2016.

topic: Law, Issues, Borders, Great Parents, American Life

I produced a play in New York that got nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best American Play.The play is called Stalking The Bogeyman. It was a story on This American Life, and my former roommate is the artistic director of the New York Repertory Theater. He heard the NPR show, contacted them, and essentially - shortest synopsis ever, like I'm the Cablevision guide button - it's the true story of a man stalking and plotting to kill the man who raped him when he was seven. It's by a brilliant reporter named David Holthouse.

- Adam Richman

source: Source: www.avclub.com

topic: New York, Men, Awards, True Story, Synopsis

Donald Trump wants to make it clear to the American people that, while Hillary Clinton is committed to open borders, and amnesty, and executive amnesty, and more of the same that has really harmed our economy, and, frankly, as he said, with regard to dangerous individuals in this country, has cost American lives. . . .

- Mike Pence

source: "Trump team dodges and ducks". "The Lead with Jake Tapper", www.washingtonpost.com. August 29, 2016.

topic: Country, People, Amnesty, American Life

Obama said, 'Now let me be clear, issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam.' No, he said, 'the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life.' So on one hand, 12-year-old girls are stoned to death for the crime of being raped in Muslim countries. But on the other hand, we still don't have enough female firefighters here in America.

- Ann Coulter

topic: Girl, Country, Struggle, American Life

Maketa Groves has a strong, bright lyric gift. Her poems come out of music and are full of music. They bring us the sounds of the streets and the sounds of nature, and make us see once again that they are parts of the same song. She celebrates American lives as they are lived today: the mother scrubbing her kitchen floor at midnight, the drag-queens in the Tenderloin, the homeless woman knitting in the courtyard. This is poetry that relentlessly shows us the beauty in the world, with all its struggles and complexity, and demands that we go out to meet it with open hearts.

- Diane di Prima

topic: Mother, Song, Strong, Drag Queen, American Life

There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration.

- David Foster Wallace

source: "Ten Best Commencement Speeches: See A List, Take The Poll" by Katharine Zaleski, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 17, 2009.

topic: Frustration, Boredom, Adults, Commencement Speech, American Life

Justified or not, the Supreme Court has a kind of sacred status in American life. For whatever reason, Presidents can safely run against Congress, and vice versa, but I think there is an inherent popular aversion to assaults on the court itself. Perhaps it has to do with an instinctive belief that life needs umpires.

- Jon Meacham

topic: Running, Thinking, Umpires, American Life

The liberal left can be as rigid and destructive as any force in American life.

- Daniel Patrick Moynihan

topic: Force, American Life

'We Were the Mulvaneys' is perhaps the novel closest to my heart. I think of it as a valentine to a passing way of American life, and to my own particular child - and girlhood in upstate New York. Everyone in the novel is enormously close to me, including Marianne's cat, Muffin, who was in fact my own cat.

- Joyce Carol Oates

topic: New York, Children, Valentine, Girlhood, Upstate New York