American Myths Quotes

It's one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose. ~ Sinclair Lewis

The most twisted but perennial of American myths is that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. (p. 174) ~ Robin R. Meyers

One strain of African American thought holds that it is a violent black recklessness - the black gangster, the black rioter - that strikes the ultimate terror in white America. Perhaps it does, in the most individual sense. But in the collective sense, what this country really fears is black respectability, Good Negro Government. It applauds, even celebrates, Good Negro Government in the unthreatening abstract - The Cosby Show, for instance. But when it becomes clear that Good Negro Government might, in any way, empower actual Negroes over actual whites, then the fear sets in, the affirmative-action charges begin, and birtherism emerges. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

To proclaim 'America First' was to deny any need to fight fascism either at home or abroad. When American Nazis and white supremacists marched in Charlottesville in August 2017, Trump said that some of them were 'very fine people.' He defended the Confederate and Nazi cause of preserving monuments to the Confederacy. Such monuments in the American South were raised in the 1920s and 1930s, at a time when fascism in the United States was a real possibility; they memorialized the racial purification of Southern cities that was contemporary with the rise of fascism in Europe. Contemporary observers had no difficulty seeing the connection. Will Rogers, the great American entertainer and social commentator of his time, saw Adolf Hitler in 1933 as a familiar figure: 'Papers all state that Hitler is trying to copy Mussolini. Looks to me it's the KKK he's copying.' The great American social thinker and historian W.E.B. Du Bois could see how the temptations of fascism worked together with American myths of the past. He rightly feared that American whites would prefer a story about enmity with blacks to a reforming state that would improve prospects for all Americans. Whites distracted by racism could become, as he wrote in 1935, 'the instrument by which democracy in the nation was done to death, race provincialism deified, and the world delivered to plutocracy,' what we call oligarchy. ~ Timothy Snyder

I was studying American politicians who were searching - allegedly - for American communists because it would put them on the front pages of the papers in their home towns. ~ Robert Vaughn

The story of American wrestling at its greatest is the story of its most illustrious champion, Frank Gotch. He dominated the field. Through his extraordinary ability, he gained for wrestling many converts. It was Gotch's victories over the hitherto invincible Hackenschmidt that made him the post popular mat star in America and started a movement among college men to take up wrestling. ~ Nat Fleischer

One of the great upsides to a national book tour is the chance to break out of television's cocoon and interact directly with the American people. ~ Oliver North

European films were what it was about for me - the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can't really find in American films. ~ Charlotte Rampling

Most of the roles that I go for are Americans, so the first thing I had to do was pin down the American accent - which is obviously in 'Blue Crush 2.' ~ Sasha Jackson

Whenever anything extraordinary is done in American municipal politics, whether for good or for evil, you can trace it almost invariably to one man. The people do not do it. Neither do the 'gangs,' 'combines,' or political parties. ~ Lincoln Steffens

Figure skating has been a great influence for me. I took dance at the School of American Ballet, which helped my own skating. And whether you are a skater or a dancer, without sounding narcissistic, it is all about looking in the mirror. ~ Vera Wang

Declaring victory without war .. the belief that India gave up the option of war under American pressure is totally wrong. ~ Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Innocence is a pretty dangerous thing, you know. Revisit Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' or, for that matter, Greene's 'The Quiet American' to find out how destructive it can be. ~ Neel Mukherjee

If you go back in American history, oysters were the food of poor people. New York was filled with oyster saloons in the 1800s. ~ Ruth Reichl

I believe I have voted for both Democrats and Republicans. Am I either one? Absolutely not. Ladies and gentlemen, I am an American. ~ David Letterman

Buy potatoes," he said. "Gotta hop." Then he hung up. Of course. A cloud of fallout would threaten European food and water supplies, including the potato crop, placing a premium on uncontaminated American substitutes. Perhaps a few folks other than potato farmers think of the price of potatoes in America minutes after the explosion of a nuclear reactor in Russian, but I have never met them. ~ Michael Lewis

For a time, we forgot the American dream isn't one of making government bigger, it's keeping faith with the mighty spirit of free people under God ~ Ronald Reagan

Mandelstam is the sort of poet who comes along very, very rarely. Even the two Russian poets whose work is often linked with his - Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva - though their work is more "urgent" than most American poetry, seem to me to operate at a lesser charge than Mandelstam. ~ Christian Wiman

Barack Obama's political roots are liberal, but he has always resisted buying into the brand of liberalism that denigrates American greatness and potential. ~ Nina Easton

I took one look at him, my mouth started watering and my panties moistened with thick fluid as if he had touched my sensation and made me instantaneously combust. ~ Siva D.

Right now in American writing there is no genre as exciting as memoir - the writer can do anything, as long as it works. It's like the 1920s up in this joint. So, I'd say, experiment with how you tell the story. In the best memoir it's not the what, it's how the writer tells the what - meaning and effect through form. ~ Anthony Swofford

I get most my information about what's happening in the United States from reports and studies, which are often in conflict with what you read on the editorial pages, or handouts from right wing institutions like the American Enterprise Institute. ~ Ishmael Reed

I am an American citizen, first class. I don't have a bade that makes me an official good guy like you, but Im work just as honest for a living. ~ Lucky Luciano

Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Other people's beliefs may be myths, but not mine. ~ Mason Cooley

The American Naming Authority, a collective of women studying the effects of names on behavior, decrees that a name should only have one user. The nearly 1 million American users of the name Mary, for example, do not constitute a unified army who might slaughter all users of the name Nancy, as was earlier supposed, but rather a saturation of the Mary Potential Quotient. Simply stated: Too many women with the same name produces widespread mediocrity and fatigue. ~ Ben Marcus

Being bi-racial and being young along with being American and Canadian [allows me to] try and cover all the bases and expand my fan base to a level that has yet to be seen. ~ Drake

If millions of Americans choose to weigh in on the outcome of 'American Idol' through text messages and the Web, then why not harness similar technological tools to encourage discourse on the political landscape? ~ Ruzwana Bashir

The power of organized religions is based upon their contribution to social order and personal security, not to the search for truth. The goal of religions is submission to the will and common good of the tribe. The illogic of religions is not a weakness in them, but their essential strength. Acceptance of the bizarre creation myths binds the members together. Among ~ Edward O. Wilson

Neo-Darwinism and Mutations

In order to find a solution, Darwinists advanced the
"Modern Synthetic Theory," or as it is more commonly
known, Neo-Darwinism, at the end of the 1930s. Neo-
Darwinism added mutations, which are distortions formed
in the genes of living beings due to such external factors
as radiation or replication errors, as the "cause of favorable
variations" in addition to natural mutation.

Today, the model that stands for evolution in the world
is Neo-Darwinism. The theory maintains that millions of living
beings formed as a result of a process whereby numerous
complex organs of these organisms (e.g., ears, eyes,
lungs, and wings) underwent "mutations," that is, genetic
disorders. Yet, there is an outright scientific fact that totally
undermines this theory: Mutations do not cause living
beings to develop; on the contrary, they are always harmful.
The reason for this is very simple: DNA has a very complex
structure, and random effects can only harm it. The
American geneticist B. G. Ranganathan explains this as
follows:

First, genuine mutations are very rare in nature. Secondly,
most mutations are harmful since they are random, rather
than orderly changes in the structure of genes; any random
change in a highly ordered system will be for the
worse, not for the better. For example, if an earthquake
were to shake a highly ~ Harun Yahya

...I question whether many American churchgoers are really in love with God because they are so hesitant to do anything for Him. ~ Francis Chan

That one American farmer can now feed himself and fifty-six other people may be, within the narrow view of the specialist, a triumph of technology; by no stretch of reason can it be considered a triumph of agriculture or of culture. It has been made possible by the substitution of energy for knowledge, of methodology for care, of technology for morality. ~ Wendell Berry

Curt Gowdy was a pioneer in our business and set the highest standards for everyone. His many contributions to ABC as host of 'American Sportsman' and other ABC Sports programs are indelible . ~ George Bodenheimer

I know that people think of my work from the '70s as American, but I've been going to other places for a long time. ~ Stephen Shore

We arrive with our ... 'baggage' and for a while they're brilliant, they're 'Baggage Handlers.' We say, 'Where's your baggage?' They deny all knowledge of it ... 'They're in love' ... they have none. Then ... just as you're relaxing ... a Great Big Juggernaut arrives ... with their baggage. It Got Held Up. One of the greatest myths men have about women is that we overpack. ~ Patrick Marber

I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot. ~ George Bernard Shaw