America Quotes - Page 99

Racism may be as systemic as it always was. It is the great problem of America. It's the one stumbling block that I don't believe was ever smoothed over.

Most of my younger Native American friends are not in any way looking for sympathy, and they're not looking to lay guilt on anybody. They have their dignity, and they do what they do.

The most important thing is to be happy and true to yourself. I don't want to look back at this in 30 years from now and say, 'I did it all to make them happy and I didn't enjoy.'

I'm an American; I'm not an African-American. I'm an American.

America is another name for opportunity.

The greatest problem all around the world today, whether in America, Japan, China, Russia, India or anywhere else in the world, is that people are not in peace. People want peace.

I want to interview the most important people in the world and have everyone in America the next day going, 'Did you see that?'

The problem with liberal Protestantism in America is not that it has not been orthodox enough, but that it has lost a lot of religious substance

We`re putting ourselves - we`re basically double taxing made in America products. And so what we`re saying is let`s equalize this so that we`re on a level playing field, so that American-made goods and services are on a level playing field with the rest of the world.

In America you can say anything you want - as long as it doesn't have any effect.

The Islamic people, the Arabs, were the ones who captured Africans, put them in slavery, and sent them to America as slaves. Why would the people in America want to embrace the religion of slavers.

Walt Whitman and Emerson are the poets who have given the world more than anyone else. Perhaps Whitman is not so widely read in England, but England never appreciates a poet until he is dead.

Jazz is America's own. It is played and listened to by all peoples - in harmony together. Pigmentation differences have no place... as in genuine democracy, only performance counts.

The Irish were treated horribly, even here in Boston. For example, in the late nineteenth century they were treated pretty much like African Americans. You could find signs here in Boston in the restaurants saying "No dogs and Irish."

The most dramatic case is that of the Central Americans. Why are people fleeing Central America? It's because of the atrocities the U.S. committed there. Take Boston, where there's a fairly large Mayan population. These people are fleeing from the highlands of Guatemala, where there was virtual genocide in the early 1980s backed by Ronald Reagan. The region was devastated, and people are still fleeing to this day, yet they're sent back.

Many people keep deploring the low level of formal education in the United states (as defined by, say, math grades). Yet these fail to realize that the new comes from here and gets imitated elsewhere. And it is not thanks to universities, which obviously claim a lot more credit than their accomplishments warrant. Like Britain in the Industrial Revolution, America's asset is, simply, risk taking and the use of optionality, this remarkable ability to engage in rational forms fo trial and error, with no comparative shame in failing again, starting again, and repeating failure.

I wish President Obama had succeeded because I want America to succeed.

During the days of segregation, there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities.

Jeremiah Wright is one of the greatest prophetic preachers that black America has produced. What I find striking is that many white brothers and sisters miss the fact that there would be no black church if the white church wasn't political and racist in refusing to worship with us.

This is the city of dreamers and time and again it's the place where the greatest dream of all, the American dream, has been tested and has triumphed.

No human being can be more human than another human being. I liberate you from my ignorance.

At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time.

Where are the flamboyant characters?! This is what America desperately needs right now! Flamboyant intellectual characters who can cut different ways. And, that's just what I'm missing.

Wonder what opportunities you pass, unwittingly, because your hands are so busy clasping what you think you have always known.

I believe nothing happens by accident. My fame has happened for a reason. My fans are my kindred spirits in revolution. If anyone chooses to ignore the message or the messenger, they do so at their own risk. Believe it or not, there are many more people out there that understand what I am trying to do than society wants to admit. The way I live my life represents a much bigger part of America than anyone would care to imagine