The Average American Marriage Quotes

Relationships between men and women are only about sex. The rest of the sh*t is incidental. ~ Chad Kultgen

Yes,' he said. 'That's it. They'd kick him and beat him with a switch. Then if the youngster was really bad, they'd put him in a sack and take him back to Spain.'
'Saint Nicholas would kick you?'
'Well, not anymore,' Oscar said. 'Now he just pretends to kick you.'
He considered this to be progressive, but in a way I think it's almost more preverse than the original punishment.'I'm going to hurt you but not really.' How many times have we fallen for that line? The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain old-fashioned fear. What kind of a Santa spends his time pretending to kick people before stuffing them into a canvas sack? Then, of course, you've got the six to eight former slaves who could potentially go off at any moment. This, I think, is the greatest difference between us and the Dutch. While a certain segment of our population might be perfectly happy with the arrangement, if you told the average white American that six to eight nameless black men would be sneaking into his house in the middle of the night, he would barricade the doors and arm himself with whatever he could get his hands on.
'Six to eight, did you say? ~ David Sedaris

The setting of 'Billy Elliot' is the British miners' strike of 1984-85, about which the average American playgoer knows absolutely nothing. ~ Terry Teachout

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. ~ H.L. Mencken

Studies show that most people rate themselves well above average when it comes to ethical behavior. In fact, a newsmagazine poll asked people whom they thought would get to heaven. Bill Clinton was a toss-up, getting 52 percent backing from respondents. Former basketball star Michael Jordan did better, at 62 percent. Mother Teresa topped the two American men with 79 percent. But she was not the highest. That honor went to "yourself," with 87 percent. ~ Michael Wheeler

Whether it's because everything is so far apart or because it's not possible for safety reasons or because it's just not fun, suburban residents, relatively speaking, don't really walk all that much. Studies using pedometers have found the average American takes a little over 5,100 steps a day, compared with 9,700 steps for Australians, 7,200 steps for the Japanese, and 9,650 for the Swiss. ~ Leigh Gallagher

French parents are provided with very different information about food, and about children's eating habits, than American parents. This is because French doctors, teachers, nutritionists, and scientists, view the relationship between children, food and parenting very differently than do North Americans. They assume, for example, that all children will learn to like vegetables. And they have carefully studied strategies for getting them to do so. French psychologists and nutritionists have systematically assessed the average number of times children will have to taste new foods before they willingly agree to eat them: the average is seven, but most parenting books recommend between ten and fifteen. ~ Karen Le Billon

Witness the surprise of the average American: 'How is it possible that these people display and practise such a disregard for their own lives?' Is not the obverse of this surprise the rather sad fact that we, in First World countries, find it more and more difficult even to imagine a public or universal Cause for which we would be ready to sacrifice our life? ~ Slavoj Zizek

And now I am engulfed in this new flavor, so different from the light but humorless flavor of the Anapa and the thick bitter taste of the Mumbanyo, this rich deep resonant complex flavor that I am only getting my first sips of and yet how do I explain these differences to an average American who will take one look at the photographs and see black men & women with bones through their noses and lump them in a pile marked Savages? ~ Lily King

The general burden of the Coolidge memoirs was that the right hon. gentleman was a typical American, and some hinted that he was the most typical since Lincoln. As the English say, I find myself quite unable to associate myself with that thesis. He was, in truth, almost as unlike the average of his countrymen as if he had been born green. The Americano is an expansive fellow, a back-slapper, full of amiability; Coolidge was reserved and even muriatic. The Americano has a stupendous capacity for believing, and especially for believing in what is palpably not true; Coolidge was, in his fundamental metaphysics, an agnostic. The Americano dreams vast dreams, and is hag-ridden by a demon; Coolidge was not mount but rider, and his steed was a mechanical horse. The Americano, in his normal incarnation, challenges fate at every step and his whole life is a struggle; Coolidge took things as they came. ~ H.L. Mencken

One of the things that got me on this topic for this book was that when I was researching the column I wrote in 2009 saying that I was stepping down from my column at "Newsweek" because I wanted to make room for newer, fresh voices out there, I discovered that in the year I was born, 1952, the average life expectancy of an American was 68. I was shocked by that figure and every time I mention it I hear a gasp from somebody in the crowd. Now, of course, we're more or less at 80, so that means that we've gotten 12 additional years. ~ Anna Quindlen

Alpha Phi Alpha, the oldest of Negro Fraternities, with all of its members presumably far above the average American and having a good practical understanding of the salient factors involved in the Negro's problem, and which a membership upwards of eight thousand men, should be able to take into their hands the leadership in the Negro's struggle for status. ~ Jewel

Average Americans are going to win this, not me. And not just your organization, not just the providers of health care, but the American people are going to cause this to happen. But they have to keep sending those cards and letters. ~ Charlie Norwood

The average American watches more than four hours of television per day. What would happen if we spent more time developing our talents than watching others develop theirs? ~ John Bytheway

We're all on a journey. The average American switches professions four times. I'm lucky to be in a business where I can change the character I am playing every couple of months. ~ Josh Hartnett

The lumbermen ... regarded forest devastation as normal and second growth as a delusion of fools ... And as for sustained yield, no such idea had ever entered their heads. The few friends the forest had were spoken of, when they were spoken of at all, as impractical theorists, fanatics, or "denudatics," more or less touched in the head. What talk there was about forest protection was no more to the average American that the buzzing of a mosquito, and just about as irritating. ~ Gifford Pinchot

Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week. For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, Americans now get in a car. On average, the total walking of an American these days - that's walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls - adds up to 1.4 miles a week ... That's ridiculous. ~ Bill Bryson

The average American salesmen keeps 33 men and women at work - 33 people producing the product he sells ... and is responsible for the livelihood of 130 people. ~ Robert A. Whitney

We've got people in the Republican Party that just believe that if you just cut taxes for corporations, and that you have more trade, and we just bring in more people from abroad, that this is going to help the average guy. Well, it's not. I mean, this is an honest dispute. We're going to have a dispute about it. The American people agree with [Donald] Trump and I agree with Trump on those things. ~ Jeff Sessions

The American College of Sports Medicine found that the productivity of people after exercise was an average of 65 percent higher than those who did not exercise. If I have something that's really bothering me, so much that it almost hurts my head to try to sort it out, I always find the solution in a puddle of sweat! Intense exercise is like taking a magic pill that gives you the ability to solve problems like a superhero. ~ Chalene Johnson

Look at the average American diet: ice cream, butter, cheese, whole milk, all this fat. People don't realize how much of this stuff you get by the end of the day. High blood pressure is from all this high-fat eating. ~ Jack LaLanne

I think the average American recognizes that it took years to create the crisis that erupted in 2008 and peaked in January of 2009. And it's going to take some time to work through it. ~ David Axelrod

In hunter-gatherer times, [the amount of energy human beings use each day] was about 2,500 calories, all of it food. That is the daily energy intake of a common dolphin. A modern human being uses 31,000 calories a day, most of it in the form of fossil fuel. That is the intake of a pilot whale. And the average American uses six times that-as much as a sperm whale. We have become, in other words, different from the people we used to be.... We've ... gotten bigger. We appear to be the same species, with stomachs of the same size, but we aren't.1o ~ Daniel Bodansky

Common mental illness and unusual occupations aside, the tenants of Lingering Arms seem as typical as any residents of any building in any big city. And if you listened to their stories, you would find out that they do have many of the same difficulties, desires, and dreams as your average American . . . . . . And yet some the occupants of Lingering Arms will prove to be anything but average. ~ Aiden Bates

The standard of living of the average American has to decline. ~ Paul Volcker

When the Europeans conquered America, they opened gold and silver mines and established sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations. These mines and plantations became the mainstay of American production and export. The sugar plantations were particularly important. In the Middle Ages, sugar was a rare luxury in Europe. It was imported from the Middle East at prohibitive prices and used sparingly as a secret ingredient in delicacies and snake-oil medicines. After large sugar plantations were established in America, ever-increasing amounts of sugar began to reach Europe. The price of sugar dropped and Europe developed an insatiable sweet tooth. Entrepreneurs met this need by producing huge quantities of sweets: cakes, cookies, chocolate, candy, and sweetened beverages such as cocoa, coffee and tea. The annual sugar intake of the average Englishman rose from near zero in the early seventeenth century to around eighteen pounds in the early nineteenth century. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Emergency rooms will be used the way they were intended to be used: not for primary care, but for when the average freaky American get some strange object up his ass. ~ Bill Maher

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law ... that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts. ~ H.L. Mencken

Every year, the average American eats as much as 33 pounds of cheese. That's up to 60,000 calories and 3,100 grams of saturated fat. So why do we eat so much cheese? Mainly it's because the government is in cahoots with the processed food industry. ~ Michael Moss

The average American burns 55 minutes a day-roughly 12 weeks a year-looking for things they know they own but can't find. ~ Newsweek

Roughly 1 in 6 Americans have Irish blood. I'd say it's probably safe to assume that the average Irish-American who only comes out on St. Patrick's Day has no idea of the sort of economic powerhouse Ireland has become. ~ Scott McClellan

There are many controversial issues in contemporary American politics where, in spite of my strong feelings, I have the ability to understand and respect the other side. But the notion that we could ever pretend women have real equality in this country when a man as uninformed about basic reproductive gynecology as Mr. Todd Akin could take away my right to decide whether I want to spend a minimum of eighteen years and an average of $235,000 raising a child - not to mention the significant cost to my own dreams and goals or the myriad ways my child might ultimately suffer for my having been denied the ability to make that choice, the ways so many children suffer every day at the hands of their frustrated, stultified mothers - is an absurdity. ~ Meghan Daum

[T]ake the war on drugs. The average American says, "The war on drugs has been beneficial." The rest of us see reality. This war has destroyed thousands of Americans. It is also a pretext for government agents to rob innocent people in airports and on the highways - they seize and confiscate large amounts of cash and say to their victims: "Sue us if you don't like it." And more and more judges, politicians, intelligence agents, and law-enforcement officers are on the take - as dependent on the drug-war largess as the drug lords themselves. ~ Jacob G. Hornberger

If we care about the average working American, then Wal-Mart matters. A lot. ~ Simon Sinek

The life of the body, reduced to its
essentials, paradoxically produces an abstract and gratuitous universe, continuously denied, in its turn, by
reality. This type of novel, purged of interior life, in which men seem to be observed behind a pane of
glass, logically ends, with its emphasis on the pathological, by giving itself as its unique subject the
supposedly average man. In this way it is possible to explain the extraordinary number of "innocents"
who appear in this universe. The simpleton is the ideal subject for such an enterprise since he can only be
defined - and completely defined - by his behavior. He is the symbol of the despairing world in which
wretched automatons live in a machine-ridden universe, which American novelists have presented as a
heart-rending but sterile protest. ~ Albert Camus