Wisdom on the Topic of USA
Quotations
The American cult of the individual
The American cult of the individual denies not just community but the very idea of society. No one owes anything to anyone. All must be prepared to fight for everything: education, shelter, food, medical care.
A Coke is a Coke
What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
The Credibility of a Comedian
The embarrassment is that I’m given credibility in this world because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does.
The Cult of Ignorance
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’
Every Third American
We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists; every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow citizens, usually by force; the messianic delusion is our national disease.
The Extent of Freedom in All of its Dimensions
The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.
Ism-mania
Grandpa: Penny why don’t you write a play about ism-mania?
Penny: Ism-mania?
Grandpa: Yeah, sure, you know – communism, fascism, voodooism. Everybody’s got an ism these days.
Penny: I feel like I’ve got this itch or something.
Grandpa: It’s just as catching. When things go a little bad nowadays, you go out and get yourself an ism and you’re in business.
Penny: I’ve got it! It might help Cynthia to have an ism in the monastery!
Grandpa: It might at that. Only give her Americanism. Let her know something about Americans: John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Lincoln, Grant, Lee, Edison, Mark Twain. When things got tough for those boys, they didn’t run around looking for isms. Lincoln said, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” Nowadays they say, “Think the way I do, or I’ll bomb the daylights out of you.”
The Makers of Things
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted – for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things – some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.