American Male Quotes

You leave your neighborhood but you never want to forget where you came from," he says. "I have the best of best worlds. I'm street smart and book smart. You put that together in an African-American male and that's dangerous. ~ Anonymous

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

I was not very well-behaved. I remember I was a discipline problem. I was a typical American male at twenty years old, and I was causing trouble whenever I could. ~ Peter DeLuise

The phone rang, picked up, and the same male voice announced, "Chris Powers."
"Hey there, Chris. Are you aware it's a felony to make threats over the phone?"
To give Powers his fair due, he got over his shock within a split second. "Try it, asshole. I dare you. My lawyers will have you for lunch." He clicked off again.
I did what any red-blooded American male would do. I called my big, ex-cop ex-boyfriend. ~ Josh Lanyon

There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master the victory cry of the great ape as it issued from the androgynous chest of Johnny Weissmuller, to the accompaniment of thousands of arms and legs snapping during attempts to swing from tree to tree in the backyards of the Republic. ~ Gore Vidal

Chris Hedges said that Michael Jackson's memorial service was a variety show with a coffin, that MJ transformed himself through surgery and perhaps female hormones from a brown-skinned African American male to a chalk-faced androgynous ghoul with no clear sexual identity. ~ Chris Hedges

I had what I would consider a normal upbringing and, which to me, a normal American up - upbringing for an American male child almost gears you towards going into the military. ~ Peter P. Mahoney

OVER THE PAST two generations, America has suffered a quiet catastrophe. That catastrophe is the collapse of work - for men. In the half century between 1965 and 2015, work rates for the American male spiraled relentlessly downward, and an ominous migration commenced: a "flight from work," in which ever-growing numbers of working-age men exited the labor force altogether. ~ Nicholas Eberstadt

... family men, Claude."

"Then why aren't they home with their families?"

"You haven't been listening to me, Claude. It takes lots of honey to raise a family these days..." No, it isn't even that, these teddy bears don't like honey as much as they think they do. They think they're supposed to like it, the way they're supposed to like women and children. They think they're supposed to act like real grizzlies, but they don't feel it. You can't blame them, they just don't have it inside them. What they have, what they love most, is their memories: how the Coach used to shout niceworkpal whenever they caught the big ball or somehow hit the little one, how Dad used to wink when they caught one of his jokes, how when they repeated them he almost died laughing, so they told them and told them - if they told one really well he might do it. They memorized all the conversations verbatim, that about the pussies and the coons, the homers and the balls, the cams and the bearings. They're still memorizing. You can see them almost anytime you're out driving, there in the slow car just ahead, the young man at the wheel, the old man talking, the young man leaning a little to the right in order to hear better, the old man pointing out the properties, the young man looking and listening earnestly, straining to catch the old man's last word, the last joke verbatim, the last bit of know-how about the deals and the properties and the honey. When he thinks he's learned all he ~ Douglas Woolf

The advertising media in this country continuously informs the American male of his need for indispensable signs of his virility ... ~ Frances M. Beal

Sure, I did a lot of things in excess. But if you look at the core, the foundation of what I pursued, what red-blooded young American male in my position wouldn't? ~ Charlie Sheen

All told, in the United States, the sex industry grosses more than the domestic revenue of the tobacco and alcohol industries put together. All told, the American male spends more money annually per capita on the sex industry than on taking his wife to the movies and buying video games for his children. All told, the American male is clearly not getting what he wants at home. ~ Nic Kelman

As an African-American male born with a couple of strikes against you because of your skin color, I think it's very, very important to have some positive role models around, especially male influences. ~ Omari Hardwick

The project of Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man' is exactly that: to assert the beautiful, bountiful, chaotic complexity of one black American male. And, by extension, all black American males. ~ Victor LaValle

Seventy-six for an American male was a number on an actuarial chart that includes men who are obese, smokers and inheritors of deadly family genes. ~ Tom Brokaw

The 'New York Honk,' as it was called, was the most fashionable accent an American male could have at that time, namely, the spring of 1963. One achieved it by forcing all words out through the nostrils rather than the mouth. It was at once virile ... and utterly affected. Nelson Rockefeller had a New York Honk. ~ Tom Wolfe

I think I was born at a time when an American male had so many advantages and opportunities that weren't available to men before or after, just a very brief period. ~ John Malkovich

Adorable in her not-very-bright submissiveness, charming in her childlike delight in shiny floors, even forgivable in her spiteful competition for the whitest, brightest wash, Madison Avenue's girl-next door is all the American male could wish for: unless, by some miscarriage, he should fancy human companionship. ~ Vivian Gornick

Being "up to something" was the unnamable and unforgiveable crime for which any American male could be indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced in one breath. He wondered how things had gotten rigged so that the male half of the race must always behave to suit feminine rules and feminine logic, like a snotty-nosed school boy in front of a stern teacher. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

A lot of great art comes from the Afro-American male experience. Black men are geniuses, and many times their desperation, their position as being pariahs, leads them to great originality. ~ Ishmael Reed

I believe that it is my job to fight for the rights of others to have the same rights that I take for granted. As a white, American male, I have had it quite good. I recognize that and fight every day for everyone to have the same opportunities that I have had. ~ Michael Skolnik

The American male is a quivering mass of insecurities. If a woman makes the mistake of loving him, he will make her suffer terribly for her utter lack of taste. ~ Pat Conroy

I'm an American male, Lowenstein," I said, smiling. "It's not my job to be open." "What exactly is the American male's job?" she asked. "To be maddening. To be unreadable, controlling, bull-headed, and insensitive," I said. ~ Pat Conroy

The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities. ~ Wilfrid Sheed

Ode to Douglas Adams

In the solar system we inhabit, we live on a small planet we all call Earth. Okay, when I say small, I mean it's small compared to say, oh, Jupiter. Earth is something like a dime compared to Jupiter's beach ball. On this Earth is a fairly large country we all call The United States of America. Of course, when I say fairly large, it's like the U.S. is a piece of broccoli next to China's really large cauliflower. Now that I think of it, that may not be a good comparison as it depends on the restaurant you go to. At the place I was at last night it would be a good comparison as the cauliflower was larger than the broccoli. Not that I'd touch either. I had a hamburger with fries and somebody at the next table had those ghastly vegetables.

From the Preface to "Sex and the American Male." I was saddened by the passing of Douglas Adams and wrote the preface to sound a little like his "Hitchhiker's..." books and to honor him. I hope he's smiling. ~ Jay Williams

Writing. Not writing. Twin Terrors. Putting one's mother into words ... It may have been easier to put her in her grave. ~ William H Gass

You have hardened your heart against your "American cousin." It was courageous in the memoir to state so clearly how you had to harden your heart against so much, to survive. Americans believe that suffering makes saints of us, which is a joke. Still I realize you have no time for me in your life now. There is no "purpose" to me. Even ~ Joyce Carol Oates

I've got a collection of songs that I've had, I keep adding to and they're all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I've done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect. ~ Charlie Haden

Middlestein thought texting was the same as Morse code, and the more people texted, the closer American came to being a nation at war. ~ Jami Attenberg

The question really is how do we get Embassy Officers into the minds of the American business community. That is a much more difficult task than understanding a statistical matrix. ~ Lawrence Eagleburger

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. ~ Henry A. Wallace

It's easy to look back on those strange days at the end of September 2003 and identify the warnings signs about Putin and Russia that American policy makers missed. But it would be unfair to them, and unfair to history, to do so without recognizing that the way things turned out was not inevitable. There really was the spore of a bright, new future in 2003, and it is certainly true that Russia itself had the resources and the capability to go in another direction. That things turned out as they did is a tragedy, a sprawling but explicable tragedy. And it is not Russia's alone. ~ Rachel Maddow

(What Jim had seen tallied with studies conducted after the Second World
War by the military historian General S.L.A. Marshall. He interviewed thousands of American infantrymen and concluded that only 15-20 per cent of them had actually shot to kill. The rest had fired high or not fired at all, busying themselves however else they could. And 98 per cent of the soldiers who did shoot to kill were later found to have been deeply traumatized by their actions. The other 2 per cent were diagnosed as 'aggressive psychopathic personalities', who basically didn't mind killing people under any circumstances, at home or abroad.
The conclusion - in the words of Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman of the Killology Research Group - was: 'there is something about continuous, inescapable combat which will drive 98 per cent of all men insane, and the other 2 per cent were crazy when they got there'.) ~ Jon Ronson

You can forgive your leaders for not knowing the intricacies of Islamic history. You cannot forgive them for not knowing their own. And when you look at American democracy, where did it start? It started, if you need to pick a point, at Runnymede in 1215. We have now been at this process, we and our English-speaking allies, for 800 years. ~ Michael Scheuer

For once, I believe that PETA, at least on the level of logic, is correct. If the NCAA has to protect offended Native Americans ... by God, PETA ought to advocate for the protection of every organism in the animal kingdom. ~ Tom Feeney

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1965

My fellow countrymen, on this occasion, the oath I have taken before you and before God is not mine alone, but ours together. We are one nation and one people. Our fate as a nation and our future as a people rest not upon one citizen, but upon all citizens.

This is the majesty and the meaning of this moment.

For every generation, there is a destiny. For some, history decides. For this generation, the choice must be our own.

Even now, a rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will not be the same for our children, or even for ourselves m a short span of years. The next man to stand here will look out on a scene different from our own, because ours is a time of change-- rapid and fantastic change bearing the secrets of nature, multiplying the nations, placing in uncertain hands new weapons for mastery and destruction, shaking old values, and uprooting old ways.

Our destiny in the midst of change will rest on the unchanged character of our people, and on their faith.

THE AMERICAN COVENANT

They came here--the exile and the stranger, brave but frightened-- to find a place where a man could be his own man. They made a covenant with this land. Conceived in justice, written in liberty, bound in union, it was meant one day to inspire the hopes of all mankind; and it binds us still. If we keep its terms, we shall flourish.

JUSTICE AND CHANGE

Firs ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Isn't protecting our legal citizens from an invading army of illegal aliens who are using our services and taking our jobs, isn't that a basic notion of fairness? Isn't that in the Constitution? Where is the fairness to American citizens here? ~ Rush Limbaugh

I loved American filmmakers when I was growing up. I didn't get to film school or anything. I was a very bad student. I just devoured film, but there was a point in my teens when I started to run a little film society. ~ Paul Haggis

A lot of American actors I work with are in character all day long. You can't talk to them. It's Method and the whole thing. ~ Norman Jewison

In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy. ~ James Surowiecki

To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race. ~ Calvin Coolidge

The American attitude towards efficiency and execution should always underlie architecture. ~ Helmut Jahn

American citizens should not lose their constitutional rights because they lack the money to pay for them. ~ Bernard B. Kerik

I am not living the American Dream; I am living the American fantasy. ~ Frank McCourt

Everybody, every American starts to have - needs to start having a security plan. We need to be able to protect ourselves. ~ Wayne LaPierre

A man from Iowa or Illinois will say 'I'm from the Middle West'..a Georgian or a Mississipian may admit to being merely a Southerner ... but no Texan, given the opportunity, ever said otherwise than 'I'm from Texas'. ~ J. Frank Dobie

I think a politician would be very, very cool to play. Or an American musician of some sort, or like an American pioneer like the Dohenys or the Rockefellers or something. ~ Jake Abel

American mass media culture, with its celebrities, shopping hysteria, sound bites, formulaic plots, received ideas, and nauseating repetitions, depresses me. ~ Siri Hustvedt

The [Apache] tribe was under siege by government agents, who had jailed some of the medicine men for practicing their rituals. Freedom of religion was cherished as a sacrosanct American right -- everywhere, that is, but on the archipelago of Indian life. ~ Timothy Egan

Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

At pier four there is a 34-foot yawl-rigged yacht with two of the three hundred and twenty-four Esthonians who are sailing around in different parts of the world, in boats between 28 and 36 feet long and sending back articles to the Esthonian newspapers. These articles are very popular in Esthonia and bring their authors between a dollar and a dollar and thirty cents a column. They take the place occupied by the baseball or football news in American newspapers and are run under the heading of Sagas of Our Intrepid Voyagers. No well-run yacht basin in Southern waters is complete without at least two sunburned, salt bleached-headed Esthonians who are waiting for a check from their last article. When it comes they will sail to another yacht basin and write another saga. They are very happy too. Almost as happy as the people on the Alzira III. It's great to be an Intrepid Voyager. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

I despise the cowardly clinging to life, purely for the sake of life, that seems so deeply ingrained in the American temperament. ~ Christopher Lasch

To succeed, this movement will have to change our ideals in fundamental ways. It will have to kill off the traditional American dream, the idea of constant striving for a better future, symbolized by the middle-class goal of a rising income and the purchase of a little house with a yard - not to mention the freedom to move where you please, run your life, and govern your town with your neighbors when you get there. Greg Galluzzo, Obama's mentor and the man who created the grassroots crusade that inspired Building One America, dismisses the American dream as a sham. What really makes Americans move to the suburbs, says Galluzzo, is 'racism and greed. ~ Stanley Kurtz

Fritz Mondale is not some synthetic Masked Marvel or Mystery Man. He is not made of silicon and micro-chip flakes. He is made of flesh and blood and brains. ~ Lane Kirkland

In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable. ~ John Dos Passos