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*["She" is Ayn Rand, born in
Russia.] Once, a heckler demanded: "Who the hell are you to talk about
America? You're a foreigner!" Calmly, she answered: "That's right. I
chose to be an American. What did you do, besides having been
born?" The crowd laughed and applauded-and the heckler was silent.
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-Barbara Branden
The Passion of Ayn Rand, 1986
Part III, "The Fountainhead", Chapter Fourteen
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The Americans are a funny lot; they drink
whiskey to keep them warm; then they put some ice in it to keep it cool;
they put some sugar in it to make it sweet; and then they put a slice of
lemon in it to make it sour. Then they say "here's to you" and drink it
themselves.
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-B. N. Chakravaty
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When asked by an anthropologist what the
Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply,
'Ours.'
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-Vine Deloria, Jr
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Life is very important to Americans.
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-Bob Dole
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We Americans are the best informed people on
earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are not the best
informed as to the events of the last sixty centuries.
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-Will and Ariel Durant
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I think there are only three things America
will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization:
the Constitution, jazz and baseball.
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-Gerald Early
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~May we know unity-without
uniformity.
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-Dwight David Eisenhower
Second Inaugural Address, The Price of Peace, January 21, 1957
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We must have a nation of all Americans.
We must expel those who cannot recite the Constitution of the United States
and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
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-Former Iowa Governor William Harding
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I believe in---and am proud to belong
to---the United States. Despite shortcomings from lynchings to bad faith
in high places, our nation has the most decent and kindly practices and
foreign policies to be found anywhere in history.
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-Robert Heinlein
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The history of this country was made largely
by people who wanted to be left alone.
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-Eric Hoffer
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~We hold these truths to be
self-evident: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.
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-Thomas Jefferson
The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America,
July 4, 1776
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Natives who beat drums to drive off evil
spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break
up traffic jams.
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-Mary Ellen Kelly
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For most Americans, progress means accepting
what is new because it is new, and discarding what is old because it is
old.
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Lewis Mumford
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Our national flower is the concrete clover-
leaf.
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Lewis Mumford
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~I love Americans, but not
when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to
talk English.
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-Lucas Croyden, a character in Saki's
(H. H. Munro) The Chronicles of Clovis, 1911
"Adrian: A Chapter in Acclimatization"
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Very little is known about the War of 1812
because the Americans lost it.
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-Eric Nicol
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In our brief national history we have shot
four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and
hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election
and assassinate their character.
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-PJ O'Rourke
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Back in London, I was having
dinner in the Groucho Club...when one more person started in on the Stars and
Stripes. Eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about
"Your country's never been invaded." (This fellow had been two during the
Blitz, you see.) "You don't know the horror, the suffering. You think war
is..."
I snapped.
"A John Wayne movie," I said. "That's what you were
going to say, wasn't it? We think war is a John Wayne movie. We think
_life_ is a John Wayne movie--with good guys and bad guys, as simple as
that.
Well, you know something...? You're right. And let me
tell you who those bad guys are. They're _us_. WE BE BAD!
"We're the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever
jogged in Reeboks. We're three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car-wreck
and descended from a stock market crash on our mother's side. You take your
Germany, France and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn't give us
room to park our cars. We're the big boys, Jack, the original, giant,
economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort
coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap D'Antibes. And we've got an
American Express card credit limit higher than your pissant metric numbers
go.
You say our countries never been invaded? You're right,
little buddy. Because I'd like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who'd
have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the
morning. A mugging is our way of saying "Cheerio". Hell can't hold our
sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, ...and buy more things
than you know the names of. I'd rather be a junkie in a New York City jail
than king, queen, and jack of all you Europeans. We eat little countries
like this for breakfast, and shit them out before lunch."
Of course, the guy should have punched me. But this
was Europe. He just smiled his shabby, superior European smile.
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-PJ O'Rourke
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Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the
United States. Ask any Indian.
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-Robert Orben
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~America is
a country that doesn't know where it's going, but is determined to set a
speed record getting there.
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-Laurence J. Peter
Peter's Quotations: Ideas For Our
Time, 1977
"America / Americanism / Americans"
(cf. SOCIETY:Hagen)
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*Now observe the results
of a society built on the principle of individualism. This, our country.
The noblest in the history of men. The country of greatest achievement,
greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was not based on
selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism. It
was based on a man's right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness.
Not anyone else's. A private, personal, selfish motive. Look at the
results. Look into your own conscience.
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-Howard Roark, the hero in Ayn Rand's
The Fountainhead, 1943
Pt. Four, "Howard Roark", Ch. 18
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~If you ask me to name the
proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all
the others- the fact that they were the people who created the phrase "to
make money." No other language or nation had ever used these words before;
men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity- to be seized, begged,
inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first
to understand that wealth has to be created.
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-Francisco D'Anconia, a hero in Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged, 1957
Pt. Two, "Either-Or", Ch. II, "The Aristocracy of Pull"
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~. . . God had a divine
purpose in placing this land between two great oceans to be found by those
who had a special love of freedom and courage . . .
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-Ronald Reagen
"To Restore America", Speech to America, March 31, 1976
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Great Britain and the United States are
nations separated by a common language.
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-George Bernard Shaw
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*Do we call this the land
of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves
of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is
the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?
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-Henry David Thoreau
Life Without Principle, 1863
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The United States has got some of the
dumbest people in the world. I want you to know that we know that.
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-Ted Turner
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America is a land where a citizen will cross
the ocean to fight for democracy--and won't cross the street to vote in a
national election.
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-Bill Vaughan
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