#america

Most people were heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after it has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#hemingway #literature

Broke is a relative term, like sister, cousin, or Uncle Sam.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#america #broke #broken #cousin #debt

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

— Alan Brown

#americans #audrey-hepburn #improvement #japan #japanese

My Japanese isn’t much better today, but at least now I appreciate my duality more than when I was a punk kid. ↗

— Gil Asakawa

#japan #japanese-american #language #japan

My quarrel with Chomsky goes back to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, where he more or less openly represented the "Serbian Socialist Party" (actually the national-socialist and expansionist dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic) as the victim. Many of us are proud of having helped organize to prevent the slaughter and deportation of Europe's oldest and largest and most tolerant Muslim minority, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo. But at that time, when they were real, Chomsky wasn't apparently interested in Muslim grievances. He only became a voice for that when the Taliban and Al Qaeda needed to be represented in their turn as the victims of a "silent genocide" in Afghanistan. Let me put it like this, if a supposed scholar takes the Christian-Orthodox side when it is the aggressor, and then switches to taking the "Muslim" side when Muslims commit mass murder, I think that there is something very nasty going on. And yes, I don't think it is exaggerated to describe that nastiness as "anti-American" when the power that stops and punishes both aggressions is the United States. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#antiwar-movement #bosnian-war #leftism #noam-chomsky #dictatorship

When the first of us failed at growing or herding or plowing the fields, we were told that we could sign a piece of paper and get money for the land, without anyone taking it. Mortgage, this was called, a piece of banker’s cleverness that sounded good to many. I spoke against this trick, but who listened to Nanapush? People signed the paper, got money, came home night after night full of whiskey and food. Suddenly the foreclosure notices were handed out and the land was barred. It belonged to someone else. ↗

— Louise Erdrich

#food

Alice is fictional. This isn't. ↗

— Jess C. Scott

#dark-humor #group-think #groupthink #lady-gaga #mad-magazine

For native wit, I only chuckle in American comedy clubs. The jokes about reservations and alcoholism make me feel ashamed, but I don’t want to offend anybody. ↗

— Bauvard

#humor #native-americans #funny

Grandma frowned and yelled something in Russian. She could have been saying, 'Open up, your best friend is here.' On the other hand, it could have been, 'America is a great country because of canned ravioli. ↗

— Laurie Halse Anderson

#humor #humor

On this important anniversary, we must remember that while we have come a long way in eliminating barriers, critical work remains to ensure all Americans can live up to their full potential. ↗

— Jim Ramstad

#anniversary #barriers #come #critical #eliminating