#american

I lived in a big bunkhouse of thirty farm workers with Leroy, who was a stranger to me in many ways because he was always talking about unions and unity. But he had a way of explaining the meanings of words in utter simplicity, like "work" which he translated into "power," and "power" into "security." I was drawn to him because I felt that he had lived in many places where the courage of men was tested with the cruelest weapons conceivable. ↗

— Carlos Bulosan

#filipino #filipino-american #filipino-authors #unions #courage

I've said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America! ↗

— Harry S. Truman

#america #committee #house #i #i think

There is no "slippery slope" toward loss of liberties, only a long staircase where each step downward must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders. ↗

— Alan K. Simpson

#american people #downward #each #first #leaders

You know, they were returning to the language of the people and trying to use musical language, particularly as Copland did to create a musical language in which all Americans would feel that they had a stake. ↗

— Michael Tilson Thomas

#copland #create #did #feel #had

Buffett was a billionaire who drove his own car, did his own taxes, and still lived in a home he had bought in 1958 for $31,500. He seemed to answer to a deeply rooted, distinctly American mythology, in which decency and common sense triumphed over cosmopolitan guile, and in which an idealized past held firm against a rootless and too hurriedly changing present. ↗

— Roger Lowenstein

#capitalist #warren-buffett #change

The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#change

American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age. ↗

— Marshall McLuhan

#american #american youth #arriving #attributes #driver

When you grow up in middle America you are inculcated from the earliest age with the belief - no, the understanding - that America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth because God likes us best. It has the most perfect form of government, the most exciting sporting events, the tastiest food and amplest portions, the largest cars, the cheapest gasoline, the most abundant natural resources, the most productive farms, the most devastating nuclear arsenal and the friendliest, most decent and most patriotic folks on Earth. Countries just don't come any better. So why anyone would want to live anywhere else is practically incomprehensible. In a foreigner it is puzzling; in a native it is seditious. I used to feel this way myself. ↗

— Bill Bryson

#expats #indoctrination #age

Where do we get the energy to keep on hoping and praying that things will get better? What makes us believe we DESERVE a happy life to begin with? Is this just an American phenomenon? We just assume that we are entitled to happiness? And when we do get the things we wished so hard for, are we happy? Or do we just want more...? And what about people in less developed countries who's lives are REALLY hard? People who live in places where infant death, widespread disease, rape, general oppression, poverty and starvation are the norm. Why do THEY keep going? Do they hope for happiness too, or do they think there are no other options but to keep living. I need to know. ↗

— Jessica Kenley

#happiness #death

The following twenty years would be the nadir of American Indian history, as the total Indian population between 1890 and 1910 fell to fewer than 250,000. (It was not until 1917 that Indian births exceeded deaths for the first time in fifty years.) ↗

— Kenneth C. Davis

#death #truth #death