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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #america
Every American is at heart an Anarchist. He hates constraint, he hates regulation, he hates law. The most elementary arrangements of an ordered community, as we should think, are to him irksome and intolerable encroachments on his liberty. But there is one point on which the conservatism of America would put the very Czar to shame. The American will tolerate much, but he will have no tampering with the rights of property. He may have nothing himself, but he will guard the havings of others with all the jealousy a man usually gives only to his own. In a land where you may be a pauper to-day and a millionaire to-morrow ; where it is the commonest experience to meet a man who has made, and lost, half-a- dozen fortunes in half-a-dozen different professions in as many years — here a man looks upon the wealth of others as held in trust for himself, and will suffer no diminution of its sanctity. Socialism, anarchism, any "ism" that smacks of confiscation or nationalisation, is a far more heinous horror in this land of democracy than anywhere in the king- ridden East ↗
...reduction is precisely what a work of art opposes. Easy answers...annotations, arrows...an oudine of its design...very seriously mislead. ↗
#literary-criticism #the-recognitions #twentieth-century #art
It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States...capable of maintaining the rule of democracy.... Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores.... I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances...to advantage.... If I have not succeeded in making the reader feel the importance I attach to the practical experience of the Americans, to their habits, laws, and, in a word, their mores, I have failed in the main object of my work. -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in American ↗
#constitution #liberty #morality #usa #values
I'm wondering whether I can explain," said Lee. "Where there is no likeness of experience it's very difficult. I understand you were not born in America." "No, in Ireland." "And in a few years you can almost disappear; while I, who was born in Grass Valley, went to school and several years to the University of California, have no chance of mixing." "If you cut your queue, dressed and talked like other people?" "No. I tried it. To the so-called whites I was still a Chinese, but an untrustworthy one; and at the same time my Chinese friends steered clear of me. I had to give it up. ↗
You all know from past experiences that the white man only sees the bad that our people do to them. They are blind to their own indiscretions. ↗
