Best 2129 quotes in «united states quotes» category

Why are they making rules that say my lover can stay in the United States if they're foreign or share my health care benefits because I'm straight - but if you're gay, you can't have that?

Why did Americans smile so often? Was it out of politeness or because of a gay disposition? Whatever it was, I for one had never been spoiled with smiles. I found it very pleasant! ... I was beginning to understand that with Americans smiling was, as with healthy infants, a natural need. And my reaction was to respond in the same way.

Why is the United States behaving so arrogantly? All that (Mr. Bush) wants is Iraqi oil.

WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.

Will the United States pull the rug on New Zealand? The answer is no. They might polish the lino a bit harder and hope that I execute a rather unseemly glide across it.

With a few honorable exceptions the press of the United States is at the beck and call of the patent medicines. Not only do the newspapers modify news possibly affecting these interests, but they sometimes become their agents.

With all our differences, whenever we are confronted with a threat to our security we are not then Republicans or Democrats but Americans; we are not then the fifty states but the United States.

With a measly 18 percent of our Congress composed of women, the U.S. ranks just 77th in the world in terms of women in elected office, surpassed by such countries as Ezbekistan and Moldova.

Within the first year of launching my company, Spanx, I decided to go over to England and cold-call Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Selfridges the same way I had cold-called Neiman Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale's here in the United States.

Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II.

Without question, so many people, throughout my life, never think of Puerto Rico as part of the United States.

Without the United States, there simply would not have been an armed uprising in our country.

With Singapore's partnership, the United States in engaging more deeply across South-east Asia and Asean, which is central to the region's peace and prosperity. Singapore is an anchor for the US presence in the region, which is a foundation of stability and peace.

With this announcement today, the Army has made it clear what we have known all along - that Fort Riley is truly the crown jewel of the United States Army.

Woman--with a capital letter--should by now have ceased to be a specialty. There should be no more need of "movements" on her behalf, and agitations for her advancement and developmentthan for the abolition of negro slavery in the United States.

Women's particular experiences continue to shape not just their points of view but their actions, in the United States and around the world.

Workers in the United States are making less than they were almost 20 years ago, and yet they are working harder.But so am I working harder, that I can tell you.

Would Americans accept if we decided to come here and decide who your rulers should be? So why do you expect us Iranians to accept the idea that the United States shall come in there and decide who shall govern us?Of course, everyone knows that I'm also opposed to the Iranian regime and I have said that we must change the regime. But it is us, the Iranians, that must change the regime.

Yes, [I am accusing the CIA of] misleading the Congress of the United States, misleading the Congress of the United States. I am.

Yet and still, Peter Norman took into account that the aboriginals were suffering just as much in Australia as Blacks in the United States were suffering.

Yes, and Syrians. There is a horrible crisis there and the United States has admitted virtually none of the refugees.

Yes, I'm going to be the President of the United States. You know why? You think you can get chicks by being in the movies? You can really get chicks by being the President.

Yet another thing Canadians and Europeans have in common is an obsession with the United States, and with distinguishing themselves from it, often by crude stereotyping.

Yet there is disappointment in Washington and in the United States that Canada is not supporting us fully.

You can't talk about attacking or assassinating the President of the United States and you shouldn't be able to.

You can't entirely compare between the United States and Greece for a range of reasons, not just because of the size of the economy.

You come to the United States not knowing what to expect. Then all your worst prejudices are confirmed.

You can be a star here in Europe and not be known at all in the United States.

You can't have anything happening today within the petro-monarchies, is going to be too risky for the United States and the oil interests there.

You can violate the law. The banks may violate the law and be sustained in doing so. But the President of the United States cannot violate the law.

You [Donald Trump] call yourself the King of Debt. You talk about leverage. You even at one time suggested that you would try to negotiate down the national debt of the United States.

You don't build a new power plant in the United States overnight. It takes years to build.

You don't die in the United States, you underachieve.

You don't have to be smart to act - look at the outgoing president of the United States.

You know, that's the very least that the American voters can expect is that when you're running for President that you outline what you would do and what you would do differently from this - from the President of the United States.

You know, Arabs are critical of United States foreign policy, but they also associate the U.S. with democratic principles and opportunity.

You know they say the most dangerous person of the world is a member of the United States Congress just home from a three-day fact-finding trip.

You know, they say I'm close to Russia. Hillary Clinton gave away 20 percent of the uranium in the United States. She's close to Russia.

You should be a person inside the world with knowledge of your terrain. And if you lock yourself into the 2,000-by-3,000-square-mile, lower-48 box of the United States, you're going to be frustrated by its limitations. You gotta think outside the box.

You know, without China there is no Wal-Mart and without Wal-Mart there is no middle class and lower class prosperity in the United States.

21. Take in a great breath of air and then blow it out. Contained in that single breath were at least three nitrogen atoms that were breathed by every human being who ever lived, including Jesus Christ, William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, and every president of the United States. This illustrates the fact that everything we do affects other people, positively or negatively. That’s why it is foolish to say, “Do your own thing if it doesn’t hurt anybody else.” Everything we do affects other people.

You take a look at what's happening to steel and the cost of steel and China dumping vast amounts of steel all over the United States, which essentially is killing our steelworkers and our steel companies. We have to guard our energy companies. We have to make it possible.

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.

Actual class struggles apart, one of the aesthetic ways you could prove that there was a class system in America was by cogitating on the word, or acronym, 'WASP.' First minted by E. Digby Baltzell in his book The Protestant Establishment, the term stood for 'White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.' Except that, as I never grew tired of pointing out, the 'W' was something of a redundancy (there being by definition no BASPs or JASPs for anyone to be confused with, or confused about). 'ASP,' on the other hand, lacked some of the all-important tone. There being so relatively few Anglo-Saxon Catholics in the United States, the 'S' [sic] was arguably surplus to requirements as well. But then the acronym AS would scarcely do, either. And it would raise an additional difficulty. If 'Anglo-Saxon' descent was the qualifying thing, which surely it was, then why were George Wallace and Jerry Falwell not WASPs? After all, they were not merely white and Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, but very emphatic about all three things. Whereas a man like William F. Buckley, say, despite being a white Irish Catholic, radiated the very sort of demeanor for which the word WASP had been coined to begin with. So, for the matter of that, did the dapper gentleman from Richmond, Virginia, Tom Wolfe. Could it be, then, that WASP was really a term of class rather than ethnicity? Q.E.D.

Across the sea fat kings watched and were gleeful, that something begun so well had now gone off the rails (as down South similar kings watched), and if it went off the rails, so went the whole kit, forever, and if someone ever thought to start it up again, well, it would be said (and said truly): The rabble cannot manage itself. Well, the rabble could. The rabble would. He would lead the rabble in managing. The thing would be won.

Americanism in all its forms seemed to be trashy and wasteful and crude, even brutal. There was a metaphor ready to hand in my native Hampshire. Until some time after the war, the squirrels of England had been red. I can still vaguely remember these sweet Beatrix Potter–type creatures, smaller and prettier and more agile and lacking the rat-like features that disclose themselves when you get close to a gray squirrel. These latter riffraff, once imported from America by some kind of regrettable accident, had escaped from captivity and gradually massacred and driven out the more demure and refined English breed. It was said that the gray squirrels didn't fight fair and would with a raking motion of their back paws castrate the luckless red ones. Whatever the truth of that, the sighting of a native English squirrel was soon to be a rarity, confined to the north of Scotland and the Isle of Wight, and this seemed to be emblematic, for the anxious lower middle class, of a more general massification and de-gentrification and, well, Americanization of everything.

All children in every school deserve an education that inspires curiosity, encourages creativity, requires critical thinking, urges collaboration, and nurtures compassion.

A local phrase book, entitled Speak in Korean, has the following handy expressions. In the section 'On the Way to the Hotel': 'Let's Mutilate US Imperialism!' In the section 'Word Order': 'Yankees are wolves in human shape—Yankees / in human shape / wolves / are.' In the section 'Farewell Talk': 'The US Imperialists are the sworn enemy of the Korean people.' Not that the book is all like this—the section 'At the Hospital' has the term solsaga ('I have loose bowels'), and the section 'Our Foreign Friends Say' contains the Korean for 'President Kim Il Sung is the sun of mankind.' I wanted a spare copy of this phrase book to give to a friend, but found it was hard to come by. Perhaps this was a sign of a new rapprochement with the United States, or perhaps it was because, on page 46, in the section on the seasons, appear the words: haemada pungnyoni dumnida ('We have a bumper harvest every year').

America is harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.

...Americans didn’t stick to cities, which makes us different from the people in other industrialized countries. We no sooner arrived in town, turning those towns into great mid-century metropolises, than we decided to take off for the green world beyond, so that by the 1970 Census, we had become the first suburban nation in the history of the world. And Detroit led the way, with a population curve up and down just like everywhere else, but with its urban decline a lot steeper over the past sixty years—so typical a place that it only looks like an exception.