Browsing Topic Best American Culture Quotes

Americans often have trouble enjoying the present moment.

Those who sit in a glass house do wrong to throw stones about them; besides, the American glass house is rather thin, it will break easily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight.

Canada could have enjoyed: English government, French culture, and American know-how. Instead it ended up with: English know-how, French government, and American culture.

I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.

I love my own culture. I love my African-American culture very deeply, and I know it deserves to be honored. You have to be aware that people are suffering unjustly, and given our own history we have a duty to stand for the people who are being treated like our parents and grandparents and children were treated.

I got interested in the American culture war back in 2004, and it’s one of the only growth stocks I’ve ever invested in.

American culture has always known success, not suffering, so we’ve never known what to do with this part of the Bible. The more we succeed, the more we’re seduced into thinking we can control everything. We dissect Revelation to get a sense of control over the future.

I’m a black American playwright. I couldn’t be anything else. I make my art out of black American culture; they’re all cut out of the same cloth. That’s who I am; that’s who I write about.

Few places in American culture have made as effective a case for entrepreneurship than hip-hop. Hip-hop tells young people that our society is offering very limited options for youth. And that while society points to a radical decline in living wage jobs for youth and meaningful and affordable education, hip-hop is offering an alternative legitimate economy that is giving youth hope.

American culture in particular has instilled in us the bizarre notion that to ask for help amounts to an admission of failure. But some of the most powerful, successful, admired people in the world seem, to me, to have something in common: they ask constantly, creatively, compassionately, and gracefully. And to be sure: when you ask, there’s always the possibility of a no on the other side of the request. If we don’t allow for that no, we’re not actually asking, we’re either begging or demanding. But it is the fear of the no that keeps so many of our mouths sewn tightly shut.

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

A lot of contemporary American culture makes its way to this county. Cuba is not some gray, isolated backwater. This is a happening place.

Coming up in the African-American culture, we were taught that we belonged to the universe and society was wrong in the way it dealt with us. We had to learn to express and affirm values not from the winning position.

I think Latin American cultures are really rich and fascinating. I like the pomp and circumstance of some of their rituals and ceremonies.

People ask me if I miss the States. I miss African Americans. But not the U.S. government or all the things they put me through. I miss African American culture, our speech, dance and cooking.

On a national level there is a tendency to portray Latino culture as a monolithic entity, which is a really inaccurate way of seeing ourselves. There is as much diversity and uniqueness within the Latino culture as there is in any other kind of American culture.

In every aspect of the religious life, American faith has met American culture–and American culture has triumphed.

Waiting for Godot was not allowed. Neither was Henry Miller. The Soviets condemned them both. Miller would have been used as an example of decadence, being a very good analyst of how terrible and monstrous American culture was. That they liked, but they wouldn’t publish him. I guess it must have been the sex. With Beckett, it must have been the hopelessness.

Historians differ on when the consumer culture came to dominate American culture. Some say it was in the twenties, when advertising became a major industry and the middle class bought radios to hear the ads and cars to get to the stores. … But there is no question that the consumer culture had begun to crowd out all other cultural possibilities by the years following World War II.

Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror

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.

I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn’t very difficult.

I had consumed a lot of American culture, but I was not quite prepared for the reality of American poverty.

Instead of kids just hearing about beads and baskets and fringe, and about what ‘was’ and ‘were,’ we present Native American culture as a living contemporary culture.

All cultures are different. Some commit genocide. Some are uniquely peaceful. Some have enormous hunting festivals or annual stretches when nobody speaks. Some don’t use electricity. In American culture, we obsess about celebrities. We create them, build myths around them, and then hunt them and destroy them. I don’t know where its taking us or what it means but I know we do it.

American culture is kind of an international culture, isn’t it? British culture is a bit more unique. I think funny things are sort of funny around the world, really.

People ask if I miss it, but they don’t understand that American culture is so ubiquitous that there’s nothing to miss. I don’t see myself moving back. It’s not that I hate the United States. I just always thought it would be a shame not to live in a foreign country.

I do think American culture has shifted a little bit away from the contemplative more toward the visual, more toward the emotional, and more toward the expressive. I don’t think there’s a lot that can be done about that. We just have to understand that it’s the product of technology and of the way people live now.

As soon as I realized that I didn’t need meat to survive or to be in good health, I began to see how forlorn it all is. If only we had a different mentality about the drama of the cowboy and the range and all the rest of it. It’s a very romantic notion, an entrenched part of American culture, but I’ve seen, for example, pigs waiting to be slaughtered, and their hysteria and panic was something I shall never forget.

Saturday night at my house, I often trot out classic movies and force the urchins to watch them. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but I think it’s important to teach kids about American culture, and films are certainly a big part of it.

There are all kinds of strange threads in American culture, and places where sympathy is extended and places where it isn’t, and places where outrage is extended and places where it’s not. It’s this constantly shifting barrel of eels.

Even if, personally, I’m in a place of contentment or solidity, I feel like it’s hard not to look out into American culture and see vast inequity, widespread institutionalized violence and racism and transphobia and environmental destruction. It’s hard to be in this world and feel a sense of innate satisfaction at all. There’s plenty of things to feel unsettled about.

Pro wrestling has always been ingrained into American culture. It was one of the first things that was ever on television, so everybody watched it.

What city has given the world more in terms of American culture than New Orleans? There is none. Not New York. Not L.A. Not Chicago. Not anywhere, in the sense that African American music has gone around the world twenty times over, and it’s continuing to evolve. It is our greatest cultural export.

I love and admire the American culture and the American dream. I learnt so many things about the American shoe industry and marketing strategies. I caught the secrets of American casual wear, that is elegant and wearable, retro and modern, and mixed it with an Italian touch, luxurious and handmade.