#tate

There's something unique about the United States, a sense of individual rights and freedoms, and a sense of social and civic responsibility that we contributed to so much of the world. We lost that mission in the 1980s and 1990s, when we entered a gilded age, and the culture of individualism became a culture of avarice. ↗

— George Hickenlooper

#age #avarice #became #civic #contributed

Fears are nothing more than a state of mind. ↗

— Napoleon Hill

#mind #more #nothing #state #than

The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite. ↗

— James Hillman

#behind #being #big #capacity #current

I used to know a carnival man turned preacher who said the key to his success was understanding the people of what he called Snake's Navel, Arkansas. He said in Snake's Navel, the biggest thing going on Saturday night was the Dairy Queen. He said you could get the people there to do damn near anything --pollute their own water, work at five-dollar-an-hour jobs, drive fifty miles to a health clinic-- as long as you packaged it right. That meant you gave them a light show and faith healings and blow-down-the-walls gospel music with a whole row of American flags across the stage. He said what they liked best, though --what really got them to pissing all over themselves-- was to be told it was other people going to hell and not them. He said people in Snake's Navel wasn't real fond of homosexuals and Arabs and Hollywood Jews, although he didn't use them kinds of terms in his sermons. ↗

— James Lee Burke

#faith

The fact is: It's true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#bored #fact #get #land #opportunity

Let there be no reservation or doubt that I believe the Senate should vote on each and every judicial appointment made by the President of the United States and that no rule or procedure should ever stop the Senate from exercising its constitutional responsibility. ↗

— Johnny Isakson

#believe #constitutional #doubt #each #ever

The people of Iraq are grateful for what the people of the United States of America and our armed forces and our coalition forces are giving them the opportunity to do. ↗

— Johnny Isakson

#armed #armed forces #coalition #coalition forces #forces

The United States is a strong and ardent ally of Israel. The fact of the matter is that friends can disagree. I think what's important is that world leaders are able to sit down with one another, have frank conversations and move forward. ↗

— Valerie Jarrett

#ally #another #ardent #conversations #disagree

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#america #become #book #criminal #i

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#boisterous #children #commerce #degrading #despotism