#american

It's not Americans I find annoying; it's Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called 'American' only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu, or Japanese Type-B encephalitis. It's symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant efforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experiences. In the later stages, the sufferer is reduced to seeking that most trivial of human activities: fun. ↗

— Trevanian

#satire #social-commentary #experience

There are some of us who have to pay for our faith every step of the way and who have to work out dramatically what it would be like without it and if being without it would be ultimately possible or not. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#paul-elie #faith

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all. ↗

— Benjamin C. Bradlee

#american politics #bodies #clout #had #history

Someone needs to remind American CEOs that if you can't run a company that is innovative, financially sound and doesn't poison the rest of us, You can't run a company. ↗

— Hal Sparks

#ceos #company #financially #innovative #needs

The American boy starts swinging the bat about as soon as he can lift one. ↗

— Tris Speaker

#american #bat #boy #lift #soon

So, Americans, then. Self-appointed vigilante defenders of the world, kind of like Superman, if Superman was retarded and only fought crime when he felt like it. ↗

— Yahtzee Croshaw

#americans #funny #superheroes #funny

Remove yourself, sir! ↗

— David McCullough

#david-mccullough #funny #history #john-adams #funny

I don't believe there's any problem in this country, no matter how tough it is, that Americans, when they roll up their sleeves, can't completely ignore. ↗

— George Carlin

#humor #humor

Over-reliance on strictly economic justifications has already begun to hurt the quality and range of education at every level of American life. ↗

— Charles Vest

#american #american life #begun #economic #education

What I see as the greatest threat to America is that the American people will put political pressure on their leaders to pull out of Iraq before we should. ↗

— Thelma Drake

#american #american people #before #greatest #greatest threat