American style is about confidence, independence, diversity and free expression. — Tommy Hilfiger
Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood - the virtues that made America. — Theodore Roosevelt
Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent. — Theodore Roosevelt
The American: a titan enamored of progress, a fanatical giant who worships "getting things done" but never asks himself what he is doing nor why he is doing it. — Octavio Paz
America is the story of everyday people who did extraordinary things. A story woven deep into the fabric of our society. — Marco Rubio
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. — D. H. Lawrence
that strange conflict in the American character: we pride ourselves on being the melting pot of the world but we insist on regarding most immigrants with suspicion. — Gene Tierney
Pop art is
the American Dream, optimistic, generous, and naive! — Robert Indiana
America is a passionate idea or it is nothing. America is a human brotherhood or it is chaos. — Max Lerner
Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses. — George Will
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong. — G. K. Chesterton
What, then, is this new man, the American? They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race, now called Americans, have arisen. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning. — A. E. Housman
What Are Character Quotes
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. — John Wooden
All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. — Pablo Neruda
Life is full of challenges. How you handle these challenges is what builds character. Never be afraid to be who you are. — Erin Brockovich
We are what we believe we are.
All these boundaries - Africa, Asia, Malaysia, America - are set by men. But you don't have to look at boundaries when you are looking at a man - at the character of a man. The question is: What do you stand for? Are you a follower, or are you a leader? — Hakeem Olajuwon
At the end of your lives you will not be judged by academic successes, the degrees or diplomas earned, the positions held, the material wealth acquired, or power and prestige, but rather on the basis of what you have become as persons and what you are in conduct and character. — Howard W. Hunter
History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust? — Washington Irving
You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about you.
God does not waste an ounce of our pain or a drop of our tears; suffering doesn't come our way for no reason, and He seems especially efficient at using what we endure to mold our character. If we are malleable, He takes our bumps and bruises and shapes them into something beautiful. — Frank Peretti
The most effective way I know to begin with the end in mind is to develop a personal mission statement or philosophy or creed. It focused on what you want to be (character) and to do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based. — Stephen Covey
Unless you change how you are, you will always have what you've got. — Jim Rohn
People reveal who they truly are, not by what they say, but by what they do. — David Sinclair
Simple Character Quotes
A man with a so-called character is often a simple piece of mechanism; he has often only one point of view for the extremely complicated relationships of life. — J. August Strindberg
To me, obstacles in life build character. You have to be able to overcome adversity in order to succeed and appreciate the simple things life has to offer...that's where most of my inspiration for writing and singing comes from. — Elliott Yamin
When someone disrespects you, beware the impulse to win their respect. For disrespect is not a valuation of your worth but a signal of their character.
Every article on these islands has an almost personal character, which gives this simple life, where all art is unknown, something of the artistic beauty of medieval life. — John Millington Synge
Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy. — Marquis De Sade
I would love to play an unexpected character. Really raw and simple and not a cliche - something rugged. People like to put actors in boxes. — Eva Green
A mistake that makes you humble is better than an achievement that makes you arrogant.
A writing teacher once told me that the most successful movies and books were simple plots about complex characters. You should be able to articulate your concept in a couple of lines. — James Scott Bell
Comics as art. I do comics as comics, and my opportunity to tell stories. Simple. Basic. Let the characters have the excitement, not the package. That's where I come from. — Jaime Hernandez
I'm a character actress, plain and simple... Who can worry about a career? Have a life. Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again. — Frances McDormand
It is no accident that I made Cartoon Town a simple little village - in many ways it mirrored my home town. And, yes, many of my puppet characters took on some of the more eccentric characteristics of people I knew there. — William Jackson
American Identity Quotes
Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples. — Rigoberta Menchu
To reaffirm the statement on the choosing of my identity, I come from two beautiful cultures which I have embraced, bridged, balanced, and identify with. I am proud to be who I am as a Dine' (Navajo) and Nahilii (African American) woman. Hozho', , & blessings — Radmilla Cody
Accept both compliments and criticism. It takes both sun and rain for a flower to grow.
For Filipino Americans, it's a battle for recognition, for identity in a culture where, for the mainstream, Asians tend to fade into a monochromatic racialized 'other.' — Jose Antonio Vargas
As problems like identity theft become more prevalent, now more than ever, Americans need to take their financial health seriously - and this information is of the utmost importance. — Ruben Hinojosa
My intention is not to repudiate an African American identity but perhaps to resist how labels take hold, or to make it as slow a process as possible. That's more my sense of it. — Mark McMorris
To be yourself in a world that in constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. — Carroll Quigley
Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can. — Arthur Ashe
In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans. — Jane Smiley
We really only came around to accepting and integrating the propositional dimension of identity into a concept of ourselves at the time of the American Revolution. — Samuel P. Huntington
American Woman Quotes
Deal with yourself as a individual, worthy of respect and make everyone else deal with you the same way. — Nikki Giovanni
Feminists have convinced themselves that any difference between men and women is oppression and that women in the United States are an oppressed minority. This is such a lie. American women are the most fortunate class of people who ever lived on the face of the earth. — Phyllis Schlafly
I bring quadruple diversity to the Senate: I'm a woman; I'll be the first Asian woman ever to be elected to the U.S. Senate; I am an immigrant; I am a Buddhist. When I said this at one of my gatherings, they said, 'Yes, but are you gay?' and I said, 'Nobody's perfect.' — Mazie Hirono
There is a battle of two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, lies, inferiority and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy and truth. The wolf that wins? The one you feed.
My goal was to become the first African American woman pilot. Nothing could divert me from that goal. — Bessie Coleman
When I was at Baylor, I wasn't fully happy because I couldn't be all the way out. It feels so good saying it: I am a strong, black lesbian woman. — Brittney Griner
I'm here not just as an actress but as a woman, an African-American, a granddaughter of Ellis Island immigrants, a person who could not have afforded college without the help of student loans and as one of millions of volunteers working to re-elect President Obama! — Kerry Washington
Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, uncomparable. You are You, I am I.
I am convinced that the Black man will only reach his full potential when he learns to draw upon the strengths and insights of the Black woman. — Manning Marable
I suggest that Black feminist thought consists of specialised knowledge created by African-American women which clarifies a standpoint of and for Black women. In other words, Black feminist thought encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women's reality by those who live it. — Patricia Hill Collins
The real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers, they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer. — Pat Buchanan
I love America, and I love American women. But there is one thing that deeply shocks me - American closets. I cannot believe one can dress well when you have so much. — Andree Putman
American Language Quotes
How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right. — Black Hawk
When this war is over, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell! — William Halsey
My art speaks and will continue to speak, transcending barriers of nationality, language and other forces that may be divisive, fortifying the greatness of the spirit that has always been the foundation of the Ojibwa people. — Norval Morrisseau
Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior.
We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house. — Theodore Roosevelt
The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax — Thomas Paine
Assange is not a 'journalist' any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine 'Inspire' is a 'journalist.' He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. — Sarah Palin
Remind yourself that you cannot fail at being yourself.
Scientific research and other studies have demonstrated that arts education can enhance American students' math and language skills and improve test scores which in turn increase chances of higher education and good jobs in the future. — Thad Cochran
We are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions... and shall rise and fall with Americans. — Frederick Douglass
When a Japanese manufacturer was asked by his North American counterpart, What is the best language in which to do business?" the man responded: "My customer's language — Leonard Sweet
No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion. — Booker T. Washington
American Movie Quotes
If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never knew you never knew. — Pocahontas
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. — Clark Gable
A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. — Anthony Hopkins
Maybe every other American movie shouldn't be based on a comic book. Other countries will think Americans live in an infantile fantasy land where reality is whatever we say it is and every problem can be solved with violence. — Bill Maher
The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris, like Alien had a lot of things that are similar, although it's also got the horror element. — Alex Winter
I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films. I vowed I would never do a commercial, nor would I do a soap opera -- both of which I did as soon as I left the Acting Company and was starving. — Kevin Kline
American Culture Quotes
Violence is black children going to school for 12 years and receiving 6 years' worth of education. — Julian Bond
I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America's culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Americans taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression if necessary. We will be free, by any means necessary. — H. Rap Brown
You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from. — Romare Bearden
Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents. — Alan Dundes
Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans — Ben Shapiro
I don't speak Japanese, I don't know anything about Japanese business or Japanese culture. Apart from sushi. But I can't exactly go up to him and say "Sushi!" out of the blue. It would be like going up to a top American businessman and saying, "T-bone steak! — Sophie Kinsella
Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library. — Luther Standing Bear
The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization. — Fredric Jameson
The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It's better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues. — Willie Dixon
In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and 'get' everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don't understand each atom of the potato! — Jean-Luc Godard
Eventually, in '84, we made a film for a little over a million dollars - with American actors that was shot in English - that was shown in Finland A little action film called Born American. — Renny Harlin
American capitalism finds its sharpest and most expressive reflection in the American cinema. — Sergei Eisenstein
The VCR is to the American film producer, as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone. — Jack Valenti
I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films. — Kevin Kline
Every time I make an American film I just trust the American director and American writer. Myself, I would never make this kind of film. For me, those kinds of films are ridiculous. They don't make sense. — Jackie Chan
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. — Mario Puzo
Vasectomy means never having to say you're sorry. — Larry Adler
The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend. — Katharine Hepburn
I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. — Lou Gehrig
American Life Quotes
Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It's your place in the world; it's your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live. — Mae Jemison
If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys. — Chief Dan George
Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionarys life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime. — Angela Davis
I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become One Circle again. — Crazy Horse
Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty. — Chief Joseph
God created war so that Americans would learn geography. — Mark Twain
I am determined to defend my rights and maintain my freedom or sell my life in the attempt. — Nathanael Greene
Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you. — Geronimo
It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared. — Whitney M. Young
The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. — Chief Seattle
American Tradition Quotes
American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that. — Edward R. Murrow
It takes a strong effort on the part of each American Indian not to become Europeanized. The strength for this effort can only come from the traditional ways, the traditional values that our elders retain. — Sayings
But the fact is, Mr. Chairman, for all the challenges the Postal Service of the 21st century faces, it still retains its traditional place as a key cog in how American businesses conduct their affairs and how Americans all across this land communicate. — John M. McHugh
I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation's history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity. — Janet Yellen
What are you going to do to preserve a tradition that is the peculiar and unique culture that Judaism inculcates? The American Jewish community is not going to survive by lining up against its common enemy. — Arthur Hertzberg
Ever since the 1860s when photographers travelled the American West and brought photographs of scenic wonders back to the people on the East Coast of America we have had a North American tradition of landscape photography used for the environment. — Galen Rowell
I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers. — Diane Wakoski
We shall listen, not lecture; learn, not threaten. We will enhance our safety by earning the respect of others and showing respect for them. In short, our foreign policy will rest on the traditional American values of restraint and empathy, not on military might. — Theodore C. Sorensen
It is in the American tradition to stand up for one's rights--even if the new way to stand up for one's rights is to sit down. — John F. Kennedy
More than anything else, let me be clear - we need to be willing to fight for freedom, and free markets, and traditional moral values. That's what the American people want to see this movement and this party return to. — Mike Pence
Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense. Our threat is from the insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions - those institutions we proudly called the American way of life. — Douglas MacArthur
True loyalty is that quality of service that grows under adversity and expands in defeat. Any street urchin can shout applause in victory, but it takes character to stand fast in defeat. One is noise - the other, loyalty. — Fielding H. Yost
Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians. — Charles Krauthammer
There's no substitute for hard work and effort beyond the call of duty. That is what strengthens the soul and ennobles one's character. — Walter Camp
If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished. — Richard M. Nixon
The American mood, perhaps even the American character, has changed. There are few manifestations any longer of the old American self-assurance which so irritated Dickens. Instead, there is a sense of frustration so perceptible that even our politicians have attempted to exploit it. — Archibald MacLeish
I am thorough believer in the American test of character. He will not build high who does not build for himself. — Benjamin Harrison
Football doesn't build character, it reveals character. — Marv Levy
Look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
New pressures are causing ever more people to find their main satisfaction in their consumptive role rather than in their productive role. And these pressures are bringing forward such traits as pleasure-mindedness, self-indulgence, materialism, and passivity as conspicuous elements of the American character. — Vance Packard
Gentrification and consumerism... have destroyed the character of my favorite American haunts, like North Beach, Berkeley, Venice and Aspen. — Tom Hayden
To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character. — Emma Goldman
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance. — Maya Angelou
The progress of the American Revolution has been so rapid and such the alteration of manners, the blending of characters, and the new train of ideas that almost universally prevail, that the principles which animated to the noblest exertions have been nearly annihilated. — Mercy Otis Warren
You can't fool all of the people all of the time. But it isn't necessary. — Will Rogers
I wanted to branch out into American television, specifically because you get to develop a character for a longer period of time and you get to develop a relationship with the audience. — Joseph Morgan
There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw. — Sayings
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. — Thomas Tusser
I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho,and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Ron Swanson is more than the MVP of the 'Parks and Recreation' squad, more than just the funniest character on TV - he's the perfect depiction of aggrieved American manhood at the twilight of the empire. — Rob Sheffield
Australia is one of the few places that I can think of where the cities, at least those I've been to, seem to have strikingly different characters and visual textures. To an American like me, there's basically Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane and the rest is all bush. — Michael Bierut
I ask that all Americans demonstrate in their personal and public lives... the high ethical standards that are essential to good character and to the continued success of our Nation. — William J. Clinton
In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility. — Norman Cousins
With courage and character, American soldiers continue to put themselves on the line to defend our freedom, and so many have paid the ultimate sacrifice. — Dan Lipinski
I think the level of casualties is secondary... [A]ll the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war... What we hate is not casualties but losing. — Michael A. Ledeen
The matriarchal society is thus the decadent and broken. The strongly matriarchal character of Negro life is due to the moral failure of Negro men, their failure to be responsible, to support the family, or to provide authority. The same is true of American Indian tribes which are also matriarchal today. — R.J. Rushdoony
Night Watch itself is a very Russian movie. Its impossible to imagine this kind of movie somewhere else: a movie with a depressing ending, a lot of inexplicable storylines, strange characters. Its a Russian reflection of American film culture. — Timur Bekmambetov
The people are responsible for the character of their Congress. — James A. Garfield
American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success. — Philip Roth
There are no words to express the extraordinary strength and character of this breed of people we call American. They are the kind of men and women Tom Paine had in mind when he wrote, during the darkest days of the American Revolution, we have it in our power to begin the world over again. — Ronald Reagan
We must serve consciously as caring role models, emphasizing the ethic of service, not consumption. — Marian Wright Edelman
part of the problem with a war on poverty today is that many Americans have decided that being poor is a character defect, not an economic condition. — Anna Quindlen
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. — Benjamin Franklin
The danger of having the Constitution twisted and misconstrued to support vested interests and prejudices must be guarded against if American democracy is to maintain a progressive character. — Helen Keller
In one point the plan was fatally defective, since it involved the deadly enmity of a race whose character and whose power were as yet but ill understood,--the fiercest, boldest, most politic, and most ambitious savages to whom the American forest has ever given birth. — Francis Parkman
I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously... It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world. — Henry Adams
Wrestling used to be interesting. There was a bit of sham involved, of course, but there was some real wrestling involved. They're just characters now. It's unrecognizable. There's no fighting in American bloody wrestling. They just yell at each other and jump around like overweight ballet dancers. — Shane MacGowan
American and Vietnamese characters alike leap to life through the voice and eyes of a tenyearold girl-a protagonist so strong, loving, and vivid I longed to hand her a wedge of freshly cut papaya. — Mitali Perkins
It's a mistake and misconception to think that one has to state everything clearly and simply for the audience to be able to follow the character, and this is what is bringing American cinema down from its position in the classic golden period. There's this misapprehension that the audience is not smart. — Asghar Farhadi
I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix? — Amy Tan
It is a rare American who does not have some story about how music has made our lives richer and more interesting, how it has changed our moods, brought out the best in our character and even sometimes helped us earn a living. — Lamar Alexander
From blood banking to the modern subway, from jazz to social justice, the contributions of African Americans have shaped and molded and influenced our national culture and our national character. — Bill Frist
One of the surest signs of the estimated changes in the consciousness of the American proletariat is to be found in the character of the demands now being put forward by the leadership. — C. L. R. James
In Conclusion
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