Desierta America Quotes

The kid I was when I first left home Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet When the truth was known I have prayed for America I was made for America I can't let go till she comes around Until the land of the free Is awake and can see And until her conscience has been found. ~ Jackson Browne

Foreign policy commands attention when it's crisis management. A street revolt breaks out in Egypt or Libya or Kiev and everyone asks, how should the president respond? Now these are important parts of America's role in the world, but they are essentially reactive and tactical. The broader challenge is to lay down a longer-term strategy that endures after the crisis of the moment. ~ Fareed Zakaria

Everybody in America grew up without a father even if they had one. It was the fifties. They were working. ~ Mona Simpson

Corporate greed is killing America, and that's what we battling at Boeing. ~ Bill Johnson

In South Africa, the atrocities of apartheid have never been taught that way. We weren't taught judgment or shame. We were taught history the way it's taught in America. In America, the history of racism is taught like this: "There was slavery and then there was Jim Crow and then there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it's done." It was the same for us. "Apartheid was bad. Nelson Mandela was freed. Let's move on. ~ Trevor Noah

She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America.They're not famous. Their names are not in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard. They aren't seeking the limelight. All they try to do is just do the right thing. ~ Barack Obama

But somewhere in America, between the freeways and the Food-4-Less, between the filling stations and the 5-o-'clock news, behind the blue blinking light coming off the TV, there is a space, an empty space, between us, around us, inside us, that inevitable, desperate, begs to be filled up. And nothing, not shame, not God, not a new microwave, not a wide-screen TV or that new diet with grapefruits, can ever, ever fill it.
Underneath all that white noise there's a lack. ~ Andrea Portes

Well, it's always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk. To just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn't get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why the ship is built. Politics isn't just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good. ~ Sarah Palin

Michael Jackson carried urban America and eventually American society on his vocal cords for a good 25 to 30 years before even hip-hop became the vox populi of America, and then as an adult he shattered racial barriers. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

You do not need to do something extraordinary, like Christopher Columbus did by discovering America, to live on forever as legend. All you have to do is stay true to what is in your heart and do your part to make the world around you a better place for all those who come in contact with you. ~ Vincent J. Monteleone

The fact is that the two years or so after 9/11 were a terrible time in America - a time of political exploitation and intimidation, culminating in the deliberate misleading of the nation into the invasion of Iraq. It's probably worth pointing out that I'm not saying anything now that I wasn't saying in real time back then, when Bush had a sky-high approval rating and any criticism was denounced as treason. And there's nothing I've done in my life of which I'm more proud. ~ Paul Krugman

Our enemies didn't adhere to the Geneva Convention. Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto death. But every one of us - every single one of us - knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them. ~ John McCain

I feel like America would enjoy this pun about me... and closets. ~ Kelly Thompson

The Spaniards owned the cow, but others drank the milk. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Italy, despite its earthiness and charm, can never be New Jersey. Here we value evolution and change; Italy, while it warms the heart, is a monument to the past. In America we change our rooms as often as our fashions. In Italy you're likely to find throw pillows older than the Shroud of Turin. It's just a different way to live. ~ Adriana Trigiani

Barack Obama has talked a lot about changing the way America relates to the world, and few areas are as ripe for reform as our policies on foreign aid. ~ Iqbal Quadir

To-day the two groups of Negroes, the one in the North, the other in the South, represent these divergent ethical tendencies, the first tending toward radicalism, the other toward hypocritical compromise. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

The major problem for America is we're losing two wars. We're losing in Afghanistan, we're losing in Iraq. And there seems very little likelihood that we're going to increase the number of troops we have in either place to the point that we can prevail. ~ Michael Scheuer

Not since the days of George W. Bush's 'Clear Skies' and 'Healthy Forests' initiatives has America been presented with a project as cravenly corporate and backward-looking as the Keystone XL pipeline. ~ Jeff Goodell

That's exactly what made America so different, we don't have that colonial aspect of let's go conquer somebody else and make our nation bigger and that's because of the faith element. ~ David Barton

Americans were folks who loved to profess peace-loving values, but who fought about everything. ~ Rinker Buck

The destiny of the colored American ... is the destiny of America. ~ Frederick Douglass

A new breed of Americans born out of the social movements of the 60s and grown into a majority in the 70s holds a set of values so markedly different from the traditional outlook that they promise to transform the character of work in America in the 80s. ~ Daniel Yankelovich

To say that certainly America was very lucky to get a large amount of land, and the native Indians were extremely unlucky to have white men coming over here, is one thing. But to say that the whole of the American prosperity was based on exploiting the indigenous population would be a great mistake. ~ Amartya Sen

Today in America, we are trying to prepare students for a high tech world of constant change, but we are doing so by putting them through a school system designed in the early 20th Century that has not seen substantial change in 30 years. ~ Janet Napolitano

America's greatness is due in no small measure to our system of government, in which power and authority are deliberately divided. The separation of powers is not a mere "technicality." It is the centerpiece of our Constitution. Our freedoms depend upon it in the future, just as they have in the past. ~ Richard Allen Epstein

both of my grandparents had an almost religious faith in hard work and the American Dream. Neither was under any illusions that wealth or privilege didn't matter in America. On politics, for example, Mamaw had one opinion - "They're all a bunch of crooks" - but Papaw became a committed Democrat. He had no problem with Armco, but he and everyone like him hated the coal companies in Kentucky thanks to a long history of labor strife. So, to Papaw and Mamaw, not all rich people were bad, but all bad people were rich. Papaw was a Democrat because that party protected the working people. ~ J.D. Vance

Eilis replied to say that it was not just Mrs Kehoe, who was not in any way extravagant, it was everyone in America, they all kept their heating on all night. As ~ Colm Toibin

Since Reagan there has been this tradition, which has become a cliche, of promising morning in America, this fake optimism, we're the best, the city on the hill. In fact the great American task is self-scrutiny. ~ Naomi Wolf

This is America, This vast, confused beauty, This staring, restless speed of loveliness, Mighty, overwhelming, crude, of all forms, Making grandeur out of profusion, Afraid of no incongruities, Sublime in its audacity, Bizarre breaker of moulds. ~ Amy Lowell

I don't think I'd want my pet in formaldehyde, but I guess in America they would. ~ Damien Hirst

This whole thing about reality television to me is really indicative of America saying we're not satisfied just watching television, we want to star in our own TV shows. We want you to discover us and put us in your own TV show, and we want television to be about us, finally. ~ Steven Spielberg

The Constitution of the United States is a glorious standard; it is founded in the wisdom of God. It is a heavenly banner; it is to all those who are privileged with the sweets of liberty, like the cooling shades and refreshing waters of a great rock in a thirsty and weary land. It is like a great tree under whose branches men from every clime can be shielded from the burning rays of the sun. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

America Held Hostage won 24 Emmys for ABC News, but someone forgot to include my name on the list of people responsible for the show. ~ Pierre Salinger

When you travel you realize how small you are. You need to be humble. You can't be a big, brash American. You think you have problems. You leave the States and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you. They have nothing to eat, they have no water, they have no shelter, they have a terrible government. So you realize we complain about the government, we complain about food, whatever it is, and go somewhere else and you think, "Now I realize," you say, "Why people want to come to America." ~ Paul Theroux

The levels of poverty in 1933's rural America were unimaginable to us now. The 1933 Farm Bill, which introduced unprecedented government control over agriculture, was a reaction to the specific problems facing producers at that time. ~ Debbie Stabenow

London is the financial capital of Europe, a great platform to America and Asia. I love the fact that in British culture you can be whoever you want, and people don't even look at you. I don't feel that in Paris or Milan. ~ Lapo Elkann

The conservatives won. They turned the Democrats into a center-right party. They got the entire country singing 'God Bless America,' stress on God, at every single major-league baseball game. They won on every fucking front, but they especially won culturally, and especially regarding babies. In 1970 it was cool to care about the planet's future and not have kids. Now the one thing everyone agrees on, right and left, is that it's beautiful to have a lot of babies. The more the better. Kate Winslet is pregnant, hooray hooray. Some dimwit in Iowa just had octuplets, hooray hooray. The conversation about the idiocy of SUV's stops dead the minute people say they're buying them to protect their precious babies. (221) ~ Jonathan Franzen

As long as we are on this earth, we possess dual citizenship. On one hand we owe allegiance to our nation and are called to be good citizens. But we are also citizens of the kingdom of God. Our supreme loyalty is to Him. ~ Billy Graham

American children hear no stories about ghosts. They spend a dime at the drugstore to buy a Superman comic book...Superman represents actual capabilities or future potential, while ghosts symbolize belief in and reverence for the accumulated past...How could ghosts gain a foothold in American cities? People move about like the tide, unable to form permanent ties with places, still less with other people...In a world without ghosts, life is free and easy. American eyes can gaze straight ahead. But still I think they lack something and I do not envy their life. ~ Fei Xiaotong

I hope that if parts of this book make you uncomfortable, you can sit with that discomfort for awhile to see if it has anything else to offer you. ~ Ijeoma Oluo

My father described this tall lady who stands in the middle of the New York harbor, holding high a torch to welcome people seeking freedom in America. I instantly fell in love. ~ Yakov Smirnoff

America is a miracle country. ~ John Kasich