America Quotes - Page 206

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

What frightens me about America today is that in the large majority there is no active sense of the value of the individual: few citizens feel that they are the Republic, responsible for what happens. And when the individual in a democracy ceases to feel his importance, then there is grave danger that he will give over his freedom, if not to a Fascist State, then to the advertising men or Publicity Agents or to the newspaper he happens to read.

My main concern is with the anxiety that has settled upon America.

America is especially sensitive to war weariness, and nothing brings backlash like the perception of defeat. I say “perception” because America is a very all-or-nothing society… We like to know, and for everyone else to know, that our victory wasn’t uncontested, it was positively devastating.

There is a choice before us as people who live in a great world, so knit together that even America cannot stand quite outside it, or act as though it were situated somewhere on the moon! That choice is a choice - let me put it quite brutally - between heaven and hell. ... But it is not a choice between a heaven or a hell beyond the grave; it is a choice between making heaven or making hell on this side of the grave, and in this world, here and now.

If I hadn’t done Bond, I wouldn’t have been in America doing my series, and I would have had a different life.

From politics and business to music and food to culture, African-Americans have helped to shape our state's colourful past and its future.

I know that I come from mid-20th century America, urban, specifically downtown New York, specifically an Italian-American area, Roman Catholic - that's who I am. And a part of what I know is there's a decency to people who tried to make a living in the kind of world that was around us and also the Skid Row area of the Bowery; it impressed me.

Romney economics would spell disaster for America's middle class. In this economy there are shipbuilders and ship wreckers.

Triangulation is not a strategy that will move America forward.

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

America, you must be born again!

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'

America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'

We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream.

Crowds stand around all day long and criticise that bridge, and find fault with it, and tell with unlimited frankness how it ought to have been planned, and how they would have built it had the city granted them the $14,000 it cost. It is really refreshing to hang around these and listen to them. A foreigner would come to the conclusion that all America was composed of inspired professional bridge builders.

America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home.

I came here with nothing, with maybe a hundred bucks in my pocket and had to get a job. And these wealthy people who had made their money themselves, I worked for. It did show me what could be achieved in America, what's possible if you have some vision to take big risks.

An American Idol is someone that has all the qualities that America thinks is positive, attractive and alluring.

To bear witness to all the unnecessary suffering on the planet and make ourselves available to service - whatever that means for each of us. We go deep in our personal relationships in America, but we need to go deep in our public relationships as well.

There are two kinds of theatre, good and bad. Much as I should like to see theatre in America, I would rather have no theatre than bad theatre. What we must strive for is perfection and come as close to it as is humanly possible.

The problem with America today is that too many people know too much about not enough.

To have built up a new organization, which was not purely political, among Negroes in America was a wonderful feat, for the Negro politician does not allow any other kind of organization within his race to thrive.

We focus so much on how immigrants can change America that we forget that America has always changed immigrants even more.

America is greatest country; but not our government.