#states

No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country...we did not, in fact, come to the United States at all. The United States came to us. ↗

— Luis Valdez

#freedom #history #liberty #native-american #society

The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, leeways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen, winning tickets in lotteries. There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media--none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#family

Under democracy one party always devotes it's chief energies to prove that the other party is unfit to rule-- and both commonly succeed, and are right. the United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent.It's history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#politics-of-the-united-states #intelligence

I rise today to offer a formal and heartfelt apology to all the victims of lynching in our history, and for the failure of the United States Senate to take action when action was most needed. ↗

— George Allen

#apology #failure #formal #heartfelt #history

If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow. ↗

— Steve Allen

#capital punishment #guide #half #killed #matter

If that form of government, that system of social order is not wrong - if those laws of the Southern States, by virtue of which slavery exists there, and is what it is, are not wrong - nothing is wrong. ↗

— Leonard Bacon

#form #government #laws #nothing #order

This is the task, I think, of a letter movement. But it should be set up only in states where a significant response can be achieved, for a letter movement necessarily presupposes a strong organization. ↗

— Fredrik Bajer

#i #i think #letter #movement #necessarily

A country like Belgium, or socialist countries in central Europe spend more money on art education than the United States, which is a really puzzling thought. ↗

— Mikhail Baryshnikov

#belgium #central #countries #country #education

I would expect illegal alien parents to take care of their children. If it means the kids go back home with them, that's what happens. If it means there are legal relatives in the United States that can take care of them, that can happen to. But I believe it's the parents responsibility to take care of the kids. ↗

— Mo Brooks

#back #believe #care #children #expect

We need the best education system in the United States. The best system, not the most expensive. ↗

— Bruce Brown

#education #expensive #most #need #states