I found Americans arrogant, Germans rude, Britishers selfish, Frenchs desperate, Chinese worried and my own nation stupid.

When did a free country start to mean free enterprise? Who sold Democracy out for a golden calf we got to idolize?

To Americans, either/or means both.

An intranasal pandemic vaccine may help facilitate and expedite influenza vaccinations for more Americans in the event of a pandemic outbreak.

Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one.

Fate. Now that’s a loaded word. Like “yoga” or “karma”, it’s one of those words that slipped out of its native culture and ended up a celebrity with an extreme makeover.

Shoot, I must have lived such a doggoned sheltered life as a normal, independent American up there in the Last Frontier, schooled with only public education and a lowly state university degree, because obviously I...

The Americans of the United States do not let their dogs hunt the Indians as do the Spaniards in Mexico, but at bottom it is the same pitiless feeling which here, as everywhere else, animates...

Why do they [Americans] quarrel, why do they hate Negroes, Indians, even Germans, why do they not have science and poetry commensurate with themselves, why are there so many frauds and so much nonsense? I...

So why don’t Americans cheat? Because they think that their system is legitimate. People accept authority when they see that it treats everyone equally, when it is possible to speak up and be heard, and...

Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins – is self pity. Self pity is the worst...

You know Americans…Self-improvement. No matter who or what we are, we’re always working on ways to become somebody else.

L’Avventura,’ Dad said, ‘has the sort of ellipsis ending most American audiences would rather undergo a root canal than be left with, not only because they loathe anything left to the imagination-we’re talking about the...

That’s my point: if you own thirty or more books, or you are reading any book at this moment, you may protest all you want, but you were born on the wrong continent.

In general, Americans would walk a mile uphill in the rain to avoid pain, unless the walk could be shorter and level and the day sunny, which they’d prefer.

What America is, to me, is a guy doesn’t want to buy, you let him not buy, you respect his not buying. A guy has a crazy notion different from your crazy notion, you pat...

Honestly, the only question most Americans ask about a new building at this point is basically: Is it a soul-sucking eyesore of cheap-ass despair? It’s not? Whew.

Maybe the Americans should have brought baseballs instead of bombs.

The president, the secretary of state, the businessman, the preacher, the vendor, the spies, the clients and managers—all walking around Wall Street like chickens with their heads cut off—rushing to escape bankruptcy—plotting to melt down...

More than three fourths of all Americans are vitamin D-deficient.

Prolific irony – For 8 years, the finger on the button that could end the world belonged to a president who couldn’t pronounce the word “nuclear.

You know, if you’re an American and you’re born at this time in history especially, you’re lucky. We all are. We won the world history Powerball lottery.

I’m not sure,” which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge.

Americans… are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.

I had the feeling that all over America such stupid arguments were taking place on street corners and in bars and restaurants. All over America, people were pulling credentials out of their pockets and sticking...

If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall...

There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

As an American, I’d like to apologize-for everything.

American dream,a spouse,a brace of children,cuddly pets,coffee-table books,rusted skeleton keys,plastic cauliflower bags,business cards of business-card printers,a mound of used airmail envelopes. Old house on moving day,all echoes and loneliness.

This is the kind of paradox, I think, of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now, and probably also a Western European, is that there are things we know are right,...

I don’t care what you Yanks say, cheese should not whiz.

We are all born to love people and use things. Unfortunately, we grow to love things and use people…

He was an American character, one typical of men of his generation, men who embraced the notion of freedom and individualism and the open road without always knowing its price, and whose enthusiasms could as...

Alexa, and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the...

God created war so that Americans would learn geography.

Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence.”He tells how the Persians were felled, how the Romans collapsed because...

choice” and some souls can be captured simply by dangling before the creature a continual, lifelong supply of things from which to choose.

A great deal of what many Americans hold dear is nowhere written on those four pages of parchment, or in any of the amendments. What has made the Constitution durable is the same as what...

Americans used to be ‘citizens.’ Now we are ‘consumers.

Americans see democracy as a remedy for all ills-to be taken three times daily like prescription medicine. It works for them. Ergo – it should work for the world. What America naïvely forgets is that...

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

…Americans didn’t stick to cities, which makes us different from the people in other industrialized countries. We no sooner arrived in town, turning those towns into great mid-century metropolises, than we decided to take off...

After listening to a lot of these stories, I began to think that American loneliness is a completely different creature from anything we experience in this country, and it made me glad I was born...

You can’t fight a war in Iraq that’s costing upwards of $200 billion and rebuild New Orleans and try to deal with all of the other domestic needs that we have and then cut taxes...

It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic...

Let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us. WE BE BAD. We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended...

Americans may say they love our accents (I have been accused of sounding ‘like Princess Di’) but the more thoughtful ones resent and rather dislike us as a nation and people, as friends of mine...

In general, it’s not too hard to corrupt an American, mostly a matter of supply to their demand. Supply should be variegated to encourage the Illusion of Choice. Other than that they’re looking for numbness,...

Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth.

We have a large public that is very ignorant about public affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans