American Decency Quotes

But as I reflected on what the president could have done or said differently, I also remembered what it felt like in the weeks following 9/11. When, for a few glorious weeks, we were all united as Americans. For a brief time, it didn't seem to matter if you were black, white, or brown. We were all brothers and sisters because we were Americans. We shared certain values, a certain past, a certain goal.

We haven't really seen that since.

Charlottesville, I knew, had the same potential to unite us.

But Trump's response derailed that opportunity. America didn't need a stock statement. The country was pleading for a serious discussion about race, about our fundamental need to completely stamp out the Klan and neo-Nazis. I couldn't help but think of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and the Charleston church shooting. Emmett Till and Jimmie Lee Jackson. Black Codes and the Southern Manifesto.

Trump, I felt, had betrayed black America.

And Jewish America. And American decency. ~ Gianno Caldwell

Lacking medicines and procedures that could do anything for them, the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations decided to take homosexuality off the list of mental disorders and declare the alarming rise in the tide faggots as normal. ~ Bill Gaede

When I did the Abyssinian mass, I went through the whole history of the church music and the gospel music, even with the Anglo American hymns, the Afro American hymns, the spirituals and how it developed, up to Thomas Dorsey and the Dixie Hummingbirds, going through the history of the music, jazz musicians. ~ Wynton Marsalis

Comfort, simplicity, practicality - these are all American words. It is simplicity in fabric and way of cut. You cannot produce complicated clothes or spend ten days making a dress. Mine is all done by scaling measurements. I use the body as the land, as when building a house. ~ Zoran

It is the freedom to concentrate military equipment in key locations around the world that has preserved American military might. ~ Robert D. Kaplan

Those officers and men who were immediately under my observation, evinced the greatest gallantry, and I have no doubt that all others conducted themselves as became American officers and seamen. ~ Oliver Hazard Perry

If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest ... she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death. ~ Ned Rorem

Going to war is a rare experience in American culture, so it's easy for simple notions to gain a lot of weight. The reality is always more complex. ~ Phil Klay

I regard myself as a true American musician, and I play every style that is my heritage. ~ Michelle Shocked

To be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote. ~ Herman Melville

There's no doubt about it: Hillary is the best person to be our 45th president. Hillary has always been a tireless advocate for working families - she's never ceased to make sure everybody has a fair shot at achieving the American Dream. ~ Joaquin Castro

I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to. ~ Lulu

American men are like women. ~ Bikram Choudhury

People who have no respect for human life or for freedom or justice have taken over this beautiful country of ours. It will be up to the American people to take it back. ~ Howard Zinn

I cannot think of anything characteristically American that was not produced by toil. I cannot think of any American man or woman preeminent in the history of our nation who did not reach their place through toil. I cannot think of anything that represents the American people as a whole so adequately as honest work. ~ Calvin Coolidge

We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel. ~ Pope John Paul II

A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. And the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes. ~ Woodrow Wilson

France has not only built a bureaucratic barrier against American culture, it has constructed a notorious intellectual case against it as well. The French spend hundreds of millions of dollars subsidizing film production, extend interest-free loans to designated filmmakers, and have placed quotas not only on imports but on television time. ~ Tyler Cowen

I don't watch TV, so I feel like I'm left out of the American fabric or something. ~ Edward Ruscha

They [442nd Regimental Combat Team] did more than defend America. They helped define America at its best...Rarely has a nation been so well served by a people it has so ill-treated. ~ --President Bill Clinton, Quoted In Honor Before Glory

After eight months of one of the most intensive public and private investigations in American history, no one - no one - has come up with a shred of evidence that I had anything to do with the anthrax letters. I have never worked with anthrax. I know nothing about this matter. ~ Steven Hatfill

Imagine if Congress were actually knowledgeable of American history. ~ Jim Harrison

I don't care what your politics are, I would wager that if you asked any American woman which administration would she have most liked to work for as social secretary, she would pick Jacqueline Kennedy's White House as the place to be. ~ Letitia Baldrige

But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form. ~ James Weldon Johnson

To complete the rout of traditionalists, in America an impression began to arise that the new industrial and acquisitive interests are the conservative interest, that conservatism is simply a political argument in defense of large accumulations of private property, that expansion, centralization, and accumulation are the tenets of conservatives. From this confusion, from the popular belief that Hamilton was the founder of American conservatism, the forces of tradition in the United States never have fully escaped. ~ Russell Kirk

My house looks like it was decorated by a 14-year old with a platinum American Express card. ~ J. Michael Straczynski

It's very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth. ~ Jimmy Carter

It remains to be seen whether the more optimistic scenario for Sino-American relations can be realised. Much rests on the shoulders of the two leaders: Obama on this score has so far been disappointing; the early signs are that Xi is a highly confident leader who thinks big. ~ Martin Jacques

Farewell, we must part; we have turned from the land
Of our cold-hearted brother, with tyrannous hand,
Who assumed all our rights as a favor to grant,
And whose smile ever covered the sting of a taunt;

Who breathed on the fame he was bound to defend -
Still the craftiest foe, 'neath the guise of a friend;
Who believed that our bosoms would bleed at a touch,
Yet could never believe he could goad them too much;

Whose conscience affects to be seared with our sin,
Yet is plastic to take all its benefits in;
The mote in our eye so enormous has grown,
That he never perceives there's a beam in his own. ~ Frank Moore

She then played a short 5-second clip of Gruber, saying the following, that a part of the Obamacare passed because 'the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.' ~ Alexander Viets Griswold

There was a time in my life when I did a fair bit of work for the tempestuous Lucretia Stewart, then editor of the American Express travel magazine, Departures. Together, we evolved a harmless satire of the slightly driveling style employed by the journalists of tourism. 'Land of Contrasts' was our shorthand for it. ('Jerusalem: an enthralling blend of old and new.' 'South Africa: a harmony in black and white.' 'Belfast, where ancient meets modern.') It was as you can see, no difficult task. I began to notice a few weeks ago that my enemies in the 'peace' movement had decided to borrow from this tattered style book. The mantra, especially in the letters to this newspaper, was: 'Afghanistan, where the world's richest country rains bombs on the world's poorest country.'

Poor fools. They should never have tried to beat me at this game. What about, 'Afghanistan, where the world's most open society confronts the world's most closed one'? 'Where American women pilots kill the men who enslave women.' 'Where the world's most indiscriminate bombers are bombed by the world's most accurate ones.' 'Where the largest number of poor people applaud the bombing of their own regime.' I could go on. (I think number four may need a little work.) But there are some suggested contrasts for the 'doves' to paste into their scrapbook. Incidentally, when they look at their scrapbooks they will be able to re-read themselves saying things like, 'The bombing of Kosovo is driving the Serbs int ~ Christopher Hitchens

The AIDS epidemic has rolled back a big rotting log and revealed all the squirming life underneath it, since it involves, all at once, the main themes of our existence: sex, death, power, money, love, hate, disease and panic. No American phenomenon has been so compelling since the Vietnam War. ~ Edmund White

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that. And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit. The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. ~ Joe Biden