America Quotes

“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, A Man Without a Country

“I hope you find someone you can't live without.I really do. And I hope you never have to know what it's like to have to try and live without them.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“No, I’m not choosing him or you. I’m choosing me.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
― Oscar Wilde

“If you don’t want me to be in love with you, you’re going to have to stop looking so lovely. First thing tomorrow I’m having your maids sew some potato sacks together for you.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“You’ve changed me forever. And I’ll never forget you.”
― Kiera Cass, The Elite

“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

“You get confused by crying women, I get confused by walks with princes.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“Your Majesty—
Tugging my ear. Whenever.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“(Media question to Beatles during first U.S. tour 1964)
"How do you find America?"
"Turn left at Greenland.”
― Ringo Starr

“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.”
― Gore Vidal, Screening History

“In America, anyone can become president. That's the problem.”
― George Carlin

“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

“I hit your thigh!”
“Oh, please. A man doesn’t need that long to recover from a knee to the thigh.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“I can’t help it." I sighed. "One can never help being born into perfection.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“I should have known that if any girl was going to disobey an order, it would be you.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“You're in America now," I said. "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.”
― Jim Butcher, Turn Coat

“It's not radical Islam that worries the US -- it's independence”
― Noam Chomsky

“Listen to me, kitten. Win or lose, you’ll always be a princess to me.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“Yes, Maxon," I whispered. "It’s possible.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“Just that. Your family must be very different from mine."
"I’d say so." I laughed. "For one, no one wears their tiaras to breakfast."
Maxon smiled. "More of a dinner thing at the Singer house?”
“Of course.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among the hills of New Hampshire, because I was bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a church, when I would have gone farther than he to hear a true word spoken on that or any day. He declared that I was 'breaking the Lord's fourth commandment,' and proceeded to enumerate, in a sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen him whenever he had done any ordinary work on the Sabbath. He really thought that a god was on the watch to trip up those men who followed any secular work on this day, and did not see that it was the evil conscience of the workers that did it. The country is full of this superstition, so that when one enters a village, the church, not only really but from association, is the ugliest looking building in it, because it is the one in which human nature stoops the lowest and is most disgraced. Certainly, such temples as these shall erelong cease to deform the landscape. There are few things more disheartening and disgusting than when you are walking the streets of a strange village on the Sabbath, to hear a preacher shouting like a boatswain in a gale of wind, and thus harshly profaning the quiet atmosphere of the day.”
― Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“You’re too beautiful for your own good. Once you leave, we’ll have to send some of the guards with you. You’ll never survive on your own, poor thing.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“I’ve met nearly every woman in this room, and I can’t think of one who would make a better friend. I’d be glad to have you stay."
My relief was inexpressible.
"Do you think," Maxon asked, "That I could still call you ‘my dear’?"
"Not a chance." I whispered.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“Is this a good time to pat your shoulder?”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“He must love you very much,' Gavril said once I had my footing.
I couldn't look at him. 'What makes you say that?' Gavril sighed. 'I've known Maxon since he was a child. He's never stood up to his father like that.”
― Kiera Cass, The Elite

“This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll

“P.S. May, don’t these strawberry tarts just make you want to cry?”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection