#erica

What America is, to me, is a guy doesn't want to buy, you let him not buy, you respect his not buying. A guy has a crazy notion different from your crazy notion, you pat him on the back and say, Hey pal, nice crazy notion, let's go have a beer. America, to me, should be shouting all the time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong, some of them nuts, but please, not just one droning glamorous reasonable voice. ↗

— George Saunders

#america #americans #buying #craziness #difference

If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses. And what can this tell you about American culture? Well, look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in. ↗

— Bill Hicks

#america #drugs #society

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#books #politics #love

I love America and I hate it. I'm torn between the two. I have two conflicting visions of America. One is a kind of dream landscape and the other is a kind of black comedy. ↗

— Bono

#bono #dreams

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists. ↗

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

#history #immigration #politics #revolution #united-states

There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. ↗

— Barack Obama

#conservative #liberal #states #united #united states

Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due. ↗

— Jon Stewart

#confederation #constitution #failure #independence

So the American government lied to the Native Americans for many, many years, and then President Clinton lied about a relationship, and everyone was surprised! A little naïve, I feel! ↗

— Eddie Izzard

#bill-clinton #clinton #lying #native-americans #president

It will take time to restore chaos ↗

— George W. Bush

#bush #george-bush #idiot #president #president

I'm a bit retarded, like most Americans. ↗

— Henry Miller

#cancer