American Decline Quotes

I was beginning to feel that there would never be another American uprising, that the energy was gone, and I have some reasons to think that might be true. I like to point out that the crime rate in America has been declining for a long time, and in my opinion it's because Americans don't even have enough gumption to commit crimes anymore: the creative aspect of crime has fallen into decay. As for the uprising that takes a principled stand against violence, hats off to them, I admire the idealism, but I don't think it's going to accomplish much. ~ Hakim Bey

I definitely believe that the so-called American decline is greatly exaggerated. ~ Al-Waleed Bin Talal

For a century, Edison's light bulb was regarded as a beacon of American genius; then it became a 'climate criminal." That transformation is American decline in a nutshell. ~ Mark Steyn

American decline is real, though the apocalyptic vision reflects the familiar ruling class perception that anything short of total control amounts to total disaster. ~ Noam Chomsky

Blues is like American Express. I don't leave home without it. ~ Buddy Guy

In my platoon, we came from different parts of the country, with different backgrounds, different religious beliefs, different political beliefs-and yet we all put those differences aside. Fundamentally, I believe that's what the American people expect of Congress as well. We all ought to be able to come together in Washington and do what's best for our America. ~ Seth Moulton

So just to clarify, I always have my vagina with me. It's like my American Express card. ~ Jenny Lawson

It's daunting trying to do any service as an American to such a beautiful, fluid speech pattern that you [British] all have. We are just barbarians in comparison. ~ Jake Gyllenhaal

Isil poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East - including American citizens, personnel and facilities. If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States. ~ Barack Obama

None of us is responsible for the complexion of his skin. This fact of nature offers no clue to the character or quality of the person underneath. ~ Marian Anderson

African American music can't happen in Germany or in Italy or in Mumbai. If America disappeared off the face of the Earth today, the greatest single cultural loss would be blues, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, rock-and-roll. ~ David Simon

Before the Haitian Revolution, Africans toiling in the sugar fields of Saint-Domingue spread the story of the zombi. This was a living-dead person who had been captured by white wizards. Intellect and personality fled home, but the ghost-spirit and body remained in the land of the dead, working at the will of the sorcerers-planters. Any slave could be a zombi..." - The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism ~ Edward E. Baptist

Here in Indiana and in many states throughout the union, we rely on coal to power our homes and provide good-paying middle class jobs - like the one my family relied on when I was a kid. The coal mine helped put food on our table and helped me pursue an education and realize the American Dream. ~ Larry Bucshon

The police killings of unarmed African Americans has got to stop. ~ Bernie Sanders

I think there's more of opportunity to win games in the National League than the American League because there are more decisions to make. ~ Joe Torre

I once walked through an exhibit in a large American museum that displayed First Nations artifacts in old dioramas, with mannequins that hadn't been changed since the 19th century. ~ Susanna Kearsley

Our resolution urges all Latin American and Caribbean countries to designate al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations. ~ Tom Lantos

I might be in a little decline. I don't know. How many guys that have played 150 games are still on the upswing? I've played a lot of games, a lot of snaps. ~ Logan Mankins

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

He rowed them past the last of the stars. He rowed them clear of the night's embrace. He rowed them straight into and beyond the break of day. And somewhere along that stretch of river, he also rowed them across an invisible fault line, a seam on the American continent that separates the terrain where the ephemeral events of everyday reality unfold from a more rarefied and singular realm, the place where mythic and permanent journeys of the imagination, such as those of John Wesley Powell, reside - the place of legends. ~ Kevin Fedarko

We just sent our condolences to the President of the United States and the American people on what is a terrible, terrible tragedy. ~ Helen Clark

The Poet Ridiculed by Hysterical Academics"

Is it, then, your opinion
Women are putty in your hands?
Is this the face to launch upon
A thousand one night stands?

First, please, would you be so kind
As to define your contribution
To modern verse, the Western mind
And human institutions?

Where, where is the long, flowing hair,
The velvet suit, the broad bow tie;
Where is the other-worldly air,
Where the abstracted eye?

Describe the influence on your verse
Of Oscar Mudwarp's mighty line,
The theories of Susan Schmersch
Or the spondee's decline.

You've labored to present us with
This mouse-sized volume; shall this equal
The epic glories of Joe Smith?
He's just brought out a sequel.

Where are the beard, the bongo drums,
Tattered T-shirt and grubby sandals,
As who, released from Iowa, comes
To tell of wondrous scandals?

Have you subversive, out of date,
Or controversial ideas?
And can you really pull your weight
Among such minds as these?

Ah, what avails the tenure race,
Ah, what the Ph.D.,
When all departments have a place
For nincompoops like thee? ~ W.D. Snodgrass

I play Sun-Hi, a Korean-American girl who is a social media expert and dreams of becoming a worldwide star. Being on Make It Pop is so much fun because we get to sing dance and act all in one production which is a dream come true! Working with the cast and crew is also a blast! ~ Megan Lee

The American army," said the Prince of Candia, "has the sweet, warm smell of a blond woman."
"You're very kind," said Colonel Jack Hamilton. ~ Curzio Malaparte

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love. - Hamilton Wright Mabie (1846 - 1916), American essayist ~ Susan Wiggs

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names, liberty and tyranny. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Fellas. Those are some nice guns. The Second Amendment is as American as yummy apple pie and after you are drenched in my semen you will taste just as delicious. ~ Mandy De Sandra

In 1850, one in four American babies died before his or her first birthday. ~ Martin J. Blaser

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

Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan had tremendous influence on generations of American because, even if people disagreed with them, they admired them because they made very strong commitments to things they believed in. ~ Phil Crane

Whether you attribute it to some mysterious triple package or to your own Horatio Alger story, to succeed in America is, somehow, to be complicit with the idea of America - which means that at some level you've made peace with its rather ugly past. ~ Vijay Iyer

I do not like football, which I think of as a game in which two tractors approach each other from opposite directions and collide. Besides, I have contempt for a game in which players have to wear so much equipment. Men play basketball in their underwear, which seems just right to me. ~ Anna Quindlen

My parents found what I was interested in and encouraged me. They didn't put me in front of a television and buy lots of toys, the way some American parents do. ~ Nastassja Kinski

By transporting Asian species to North America, and North American species to Australia, and Australian species to Africa, and European species to Antarctica, we are, in effect, reassembling the world into one enormous supercontinent - what biologists sometimes refer to as the New Pangaea. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, and he had all the look of an American person who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial, and spell his middle name out. ~ Mark Twain

Every week, as an 11-year-old kid, I would tune in to what was really the first American Idol-type program, a radio show called 'Major Bowes' Amateur Hour.' The winning group on the evening of September 8, 1935, was called the Hoboken Four, and their spokesman was Frank Sinatra, then aged 19. ~ Tony Bennett

At 200 pounds, with a 17-inch neck, a resting pulse of 78, a bench press of 200 pounds, I was very much indeed a normal, All-American male. I carried my sickness within. ~ Dirk Benedict

To shut one's door while others suffer, to care only for one's own, disclaiming responsibility for humanity, is to destroy all good impulse and to build up a deadly selfishness which will be a boomerang in its effect upon ourselves. Let our own children see the opportunity now theirs for Americanism in the best and traditional sense. There was never a better hour than this to be an American. May 1940, Christian Herald. ~ Pearl S. Buck

The last line of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen is addressed to the American people and their congressmen. "As they deal with me and my people, kindly, generously, and justly, so may the Great Ruler of all nations deal with the grand and glorious nation of the United States of America." It's clever to imply that if the U.S. swallows up her little country, God will smite it. As I reread the last sentance of a book written by a Hawaiian queen wh was taught to read and write by American missionaries, her final thought seems emblematic of how hierarchical Hawaiians adapted to Christianity. Jehovah, "the Great Ruler of all nations," is the highest high chief in the universe. ~ Sarah Vowell