The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.

For most Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.

All children should be taught to unconditionally accept, approve, admire, appreciate, forgive, trust, and ultimately, love their own person.

Make good and sure your clients all call themselves Americans —proudly so, defiantly, loudly— but without any more thought about it than wearing a hat.

All my life I wanted to go to bed with an American, and now I had, and I’m beginning to see why people don’t do it more often.

Americans are interesting creatures. They criticize those who speak their language with a slight accent but have no issues with butchering most other languages, my name included.

There was no experience, I thought, quite as wonderful as being an American in Paris.

I still believe that many Americans have a deep longing for that glorious moment when a sermon is more Biblical than American.

unfettered leewardings,” here at the end of the world.

Finally, the president added, ‘The American people are idealists, but they also want their leaders to be realistic…

There are many ways to honor America. This book is mine. I have completed this journey of self-education in the belief that the most terrifying possibility since 9/11 has not been terrorism–as frightening as that...

That’s what everyone thinks–they think being a cop is about punishing people for doing wrong. But that’s not true. You know it isn’t. It’s about believing in people, believing in the good. In the will...

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago–never mind how long precisely–having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see...

Americans like to make money; Canadians like to audit it. I know no other country where accountants have a higher social and moral status.

The American people spend thousands of dollars to propagate the doctrines of the fall of man, the creation of the world out of nothing in six days by a personal God, vicarious atonement, absolution from...

You can learn English online

One of the questions I have been asked many times since this story broke is this: Now that the facts are out there, what can we do? My answer, depressing and cynical as it may...

It was a survival thing: he didn’t answer back, didn’t say anything about job security for prison guards, debate the nature of repentance, rehabilitation, or rates of recidivism. He didn’t say anything funny or clever,...

I have to return some videotapes

The law is too important to be left to the lawyers, to paraphrase Georges Clemenceau about war and generals. We laymen know too little about our Constitution and think too superficially about its influence on...

It is good for a student to be poor. Getting and spending, the typical American college student lays waste his powers. Work and contemplation don’t mix, and university days ought to be days of contemplation.

The joke was that President Bush only declared war when Starbucks was hit. You can mess with the U.N. all you want, but when you start interfering with the right to get caffeinated, someone has...

The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.

…am so deeply impressed with the fair mindedness and tolerance of the American people…

I’m starving,” it is a prelude to a midnight raid on a well-stocked refrigerator or a sudden trip to the nearest fast food restaurant.

Paine suffered then, as now he suffers not so much because of what he wrote as from the misinterpretations of others…He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on...

It strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.

Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.

Willard Gibbs is the type of the imagination at work in the world. His story is that of an opening up which has had its effect on our lives and our thinking; and, it seems...

The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon [the ‘Super’, i.e. the hydrogen bomb] makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole....

If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a theory.

While you’re alive there’s no time for minor amazements.

As a matter of fact, with all his wit, humor, raillery, persiflage, he was the profoundest logician that ever appealed to the intellect of an American audience. There was logic even in his laughter. He...

His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness...

People are invariably surprised to hear me say I am both an atheist and an agnostic, as if this somehow weakens my certainty. I usually reply with a question like, ‘Well, are you a Republican...

The Italians say ciao. The Chinese say Chow. And the Americans chow while they say stuff.

Americans bred like rabbits, expecting the reaper to slaughter at least a few before they reached ripeness.

America. Where property damage is a greater offense than genocide.

I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came.

Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in...

Respect your needs and limitations as you work through your grief and begin to heal

Too bad Americans can’t export Awesome, because I have boxes and boxes of the stuff just lying around in my attic.

Praise be to Allah, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: ‘But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them,...

He will know from and early age that failure is not disgrace. It’s just a pitch that you missed, and you’d better get ready for the next one. The next one might be the shot...

Traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time.

The American really loves nothing but his automobile: not his wife his child nor his country nor even his bank-account first (in fact he doesn’t really love that bank-account nearly as much as foreigners like...

In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public...

Yet that is considered an excellent school, and I dare say it would be if the benighted lady did not think it necessary to cram her pupils like Thanksgiving turkeys, instead of feeding them in...

Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I’m from America, I consider myself an Armenian writer. The words I use are in English, the surroundings I write about are American, but the...

O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things,That draws oblivion’s curtains over kings;Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not,Their names without a record are forgot,Their parts, their ports, their pomps all laid in th’ dustNor...