#american

the American nation today is infantile so much as adolescent—that is ambivalent in its twin desire for both authoritarian structure and the end of parental hegemony ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#dreams

In times of war or peace the US will gladly pay a man to fail should his heart be in it, a small shimmering proof of the American dream. ↗

— Jonathan Culver

#army #failure #soldiers #united-states #usa

I'm saying the American way is to overcome, to conquer, to come out on top. And we do it by spending and eating and screwing our women harder than anyone else. That's all I'm saying. ↗

— Neil LaBute

#united-states #dreams

the Reagan years "produced one of the most dramatic redistributions of income in the nation's history....The income of families in the bottom decile fell by 10.4 percent...while the income of those in the top one percent rose by 87.1 percent." Chain Reaction, 23 ↗

— Thomas B. Edsall

#justice #dreams

Now the line is: Forget the classics, concentrate on an education for the 21st century! Which apparently means knowing how to operate electronic devices and figure out a spreadsheet. That's not education, it's vocational training. What once were means seem to have become ends in education. And our more with-it "educators" shift with every passing wind, clutching at the latest gimmick the way drowning men do at straws. ↗

— Paul Greenberg

#demise #education #today #education

I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit. ↗

— Theodore Roosevelt

#equality #freedom #independence #individuality #liberty

Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept us safe among them... The animals had rights - the right of man's protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, the right to freedom, and the right to man's indebtedness. This concept of life and its relations filled us with the joy and mystery of living; it gave us reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all. ↗

— Chief Luther Standing Bear

#animals #earth #mother-earth #native-american #equality

Your life can be different, Young Ju. Study and be strong. In America, women have choices. ↗

— An Na

#assimilation #education #gender-equality #korean #education

Above all, it seems to me wrongheaded and dangerous to invoke historical assumptions about environmental practices of native peoples in order to justify treating them fairly. ... By invoking this assumption [i.e., that they were/are better environmental stewards than other peoples or parts of contemporary society] to justify fair treatment of native peoples, we imply that it would be OK to mistreat them if that assumption could be refuted. In fact, the case against mistreating them isn't based on any historical assumption about their environmental practices: it's based on a moral principle, namely, that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate or exterminate another people. ↗

— Jared Diamond

#dispossession #environment #equality #extermination #morality

We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win, we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluable, we, or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred conviction that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every men with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief. ↗

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

#slavery #war #equality