American Culture Quotes

“Owning land is like owning the ocean, or the air. no one owns land.”
― Tamanend

“We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.

How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.”
― Wendell Berry

“American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.”
― H. L. Mencken

“[N]ow that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”
― Jimmy Carter

“Every white person in this country-and I do not care what he or she says-knows one thing. They may not know, as they put, "what I want",but they know they would not like to be black here.
If they know that, then they know everything they need to know, and whatever else they say is a lie.”
― James Baldwin, The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings

“Their constant outward-looking, their mania for radios, cars, and a thousand other trinkets made them dream and fix their eyes upon the trash of life, made it impossible for them to learn a language which could have taught them to speak of what was in their or others' hearts. The words of their souls were the syllables of popular songs.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“Alice is fictional. This isn't.”
― Jess C. Scott, Zombie Mania: A Zombie Apocalypse Parody

“There is hardly any political question in the United States that sooner or later does not turn into a judicial question. From that, the obligation that the parties find in their daily polemics to borrow ideas and language from the judicial system. Since most public men are or have formerly been jurists, they make the habits and the turn of ideas that belong to jurists pass into the handling of public affairs. The jury ends up by familiarizing all classes with them. Thus, judicial language becomes, in a way, the common language; so the spirit of the jurist, born inside the schools and courtrooms, spreads little by little beyond their confines; it infiltrates all of society, so to speak; it descends to the lowest ranks, and the entire people finishes by acquiring a part of the habits and tastes of the magistrate.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“What sort of place lets you drive and vote and fuck before it lets you drink a beer?” ~Mark Cooper”
― Lisa Henry, Mark Cooper versus America

“The term [Americanization] invokes the transformation of the landscape into unnatural mechanical shapes, of night into day, of speed for its own sake, an irrational passion for novelty at the expense of quality, a worship of gimmickry.”
― Robert Stone

“In America, people with pre-existing mental health issues have access to firearms but not healthcare. Thanks, Republicans!”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, Inside The Mind of an Introvert

“I sometimes wonder whether our churches--living as we do in American death-denying culture, relentlessly smiling through our praise choruses--are inadvertently helping people live not as much in hope as in denial.”
― Mark Galli

“Pop culture. Nobody does bullshit better than us. Right? China took over manufacturing. And the Middle East has us on fossil fuels. That's just geography and politics. We're a nation of whacko immigrants. Scavengers and con men. We crossed the ocean on faith, stole some land and stone-cold made up a whole country out of nothing but balls and bullshit. Superhero comics got invented by crazy genius Jews who showed up and revamped the refugee experience into a Man of Steel sent from Krypton with a secret identity.”
― Damon Suede, Bad Idea

“As Wade Clark Roof noted in his study, "the 'weightlessness' of contemporary belief in God is a reality...for religious liberals and many evangelicals.”
― Mark Galli

“Let us honestly state the facts. Our America has a bad name for superficialness. Great men, great nations have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We also discussed whether these videos in some way contributed to a sense of European superiority, as if police forces in Europe were not endemically racist.

Which they are, Bobbi said.

Yeah I don't think the expression is "American cops are bastards," said Nick.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends / Normal People

“Nothing about the the birth of America is great - America is a terrorist nation, built by terrorists who invaded other people's land, stripped them of their homes, and built a spin-off of the ruthless British empire over their blood and bones. You think America's homeless problem is something new! It's not - America has been making people homeless ever since the pilgrims set foot in Plymouth Rock. The pilgrims were not pioneers, they were terrorists.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth

“I don't think that America really respects people who devote themselves to something like sitting alone doing artwork rather than being out there hustling.”
― R. Crumb

“Privately I've always considered myself to have some talent for measuring a woman's mood. But the expression on (her) face is forcing me to reconsider. Not blank, but the opposite. Regret coexisting with pride, with hints of resentment, joy, frustration, shame, resignation, and curiosity. When it comes to emotions, women know how to paint with the full set of oils, while men are busy doodling with crayons”
― Hank Moody, God Hates Us All

“One of the armed guards smiled and said, “God bless,” and I felt his sincerity, despite his weapons. It was a reminder of the enormous paradoxes in a religious worldview that holds as much dazed and romantic hope as it does fatalism—the possibility of heaven for some, and the certainty of hell for others.”
― Catherine Lacey, Biography of X

“আমেরিকানদের কথাবার্তার একটা বড় অংশ হয় গাড়ি নিয়ে। গাড়ি নিয়ে তারা গান লেখে, সিনেমা তৈরি করে। সাহিত্যের বড় অংশ জুড়ে রয়েছে গাড়ি, প্রেম ভালবাসা হয় গাড়িতে। খুন-জখম হয় গাড়িতে। গাড়ি নিয়ে তৈরি হয়েছে তাদের কালচার।”
― Muhammed Zafar Iqbal - মুহম্মদ জাফর ইকবাল

“Nothing about the the birth of America is great - America is a terrorist nation, built by terrorists who invaded other people's land, stripped them of their homes, and built a spin-off of the ruthless British empire over their blood and bones.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth

“The pilgrims were not pioneers, they were terrorists.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth

“Americans, for the most part, take themselves entirely too seriously. They rarely see the absurdity of the television shows that they watch, of the hilarious silliness of shopping malls, or the dizzying frivolity of the unending fashions invented and discarded by the market.”
― Andrei Codrescu, The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile's Story of Return & Revolution

“The United States never really broke off with the British Empire, it simply became the new age British Empire - it became the new face of tyranny.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch

“It is easy to see how, in a world as devoid of meaning as the one that all of these fictional characters inhabit - a world modeled closely on the real modern world - madness is both a legitimate response and an effective challenge to the superficial sanity of the social order and historical process…only the person out of step with society has an appropriate vantage point from which to view its failings; only the person who fails to obey the institutions that mandate certain behaviors can appreciate their rigidity and the consequences of nonconformity. And only those who are victims of the system can bring about real reforms in it. Only the inmates can run the asylum - and, as much of the best experimental fiction of recent years suggests, only the inmates should.”
― Barbara Tepa Lupack, Insanity as Redemption in Contemporary American Fiction: Inmates Running the Asylum

“Madness of triumph made America the United States of Atrocity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“Америка — страна, которая любит примитивную ясность во всех своих делах и идеях. Быть богатым лучше, чем быть бедным. И человек, вместо того чтобы терять время на обдумывание причин, которые породили бедность, и уничтожить эти причины, старается всеми возможными способами добыть миллион. Миллиард лучше, чем миллион. И человек, вместо того чтобы бросить все дела и наслаждаться своим миллионом, о котором мечтал, сидит в офисе, потный, без пиджака, и делает миллиард. Заниматься спортом полезнее для здоровья, чем читать книги. И человек все свое свободное время отдает спорту.”
― Ilya Ilf, Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers

“Lisa Fithian: The direct action element always brings the energy, attracts young people, but it is also the primary way in which we're building culture. Because all of these movements have to have culture the songs, the music, the visuals. Culture's life. And we're dealing with a culture of death in the U.S. We need to have an alternative. So, we were embodying a culture of life.
[As quoted by DW Gibson.]”
― DW Gibson, One Week to Change the World: An Oral History of the 1999 WTO Protests