#rican

The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come! ↗

— Patrick Henry

#elections

Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it." [Q&A with Larry McCaffery, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2] ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#darkness #fiction #human #humanity #mankind

I had the notion that I wanted to write the great dirty American novel, so I went to Roanoke College on the GI Bill. ↗

— Tom T. Hall

#bill #college #dirty #great #had

I don't see much future for the Americans ... it's a decayed country. And they have their racial problem, and the problem of social inequalities ... my feelings against Americanism are feelings of hatred and deep repugnance ... everything about the behaviour of American society reveals that it's half Judaised, and the other half negrified. How can one expect a State like that to hold together? ↗

— Adolf Hitler

#problems #race #hatred

The American Indians were Communists. They were. Every anthropologist will tell you they were Communists. No rich, no poor. If somebody needed something the community chipped in. ↗

— Pete Seeger

#communism #communism

What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal. ↗

— Chinua Achebe

#stereotypes

One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle. ↗

— James Otis

#freedom

There's none so blind as those who will not listen. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#paraphrased #stubbornness #americans

Over time, it is all too common for people to lose touch with their heritage, as the thrill and immediacy of the present crowds out the echoes and lessons of the past. It would be a shame if that were to happen with respect to the fur trade. It is a seminal part of who we are as a nation, and how we came to be. ↗

— Eric Jay Dolin

#astor #beaver #buffalo #fur #fur-trade

But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art. ↗

— Russell Banks

#american #art #classics #early #early age