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Traditionally, emotional and social problems have been judged as the moral shortcomings of an individual. Someone suffering from a psychiatric illness or an addiction is rarely viewed as a person who has a disorder or who is taxed by overwhelming circumstances. Instead the affliction is becomes a metaphor for a host of evils; it serves a testimony of the individual's unworthiness, a cause for condemnation.-- Ellen L. Bassuk ("Scientific American", December 1991)
On an American Airlines package of nuts: Instructions: Open package, eat nuts.
Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable. As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing a part of our lives?-- Alan Kay (``Computer Software'', Scientific American)
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.-- Georges Clemenceau (1 December 1945)
"That's the trouble with women these days. They act like men and want to be treated like women" (An American in Paris)
98% of us Americans are hard-working people. It's the other 2% that give us a bad reputation. Then again, we did elect them.
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.-- H. L. Mencken
The American public knows what it wants, and deserves to get it good and hard.-- H. L. Mencken
There's a common component of scientific thought which says that a) if you're not a convicted Scientist then you can't get involved in discussions about Science and b) Science is all about Progress and means that things will always get better if Scientists are in Control.-- Neil Lewis
"Our American professors like their literature clear, cold, pure and very dead."-- Sinclair Lewis
Bagdikian's Observation:
Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew Passion' on a ukelele.
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."-- Mark Twain
"Confronted with the choice, the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb.-- Spiro T. Agnew
"In America--as elsewhere--free speech is confined to the dead."-- Mark Twain
That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans. A European says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with me?" An American says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?"-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
Dustin Pons, an American high-school student who attended a Soviet school for three weeks, as quoted in the New York Times: "American teenagers are more socially advanced. For instance, in their free time Soviets would rather read a book or walk in the park or play the piano. American teenagers would probably go out and watch TV, go to a movie, or something more actively inclined." ("The Progressive")
All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.-- Carl Sagan
"America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damn well please."-- P.J. O'Rourke
In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.-- Adlai Stevenson
In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.-- Oscar Wilde
Imaginative writers are valuable colleagues and their testimony is to be rated very highly because they draw on sources that we have not yet made accessible to science. The portrayal of the psychic life of human beings is, of course, the imaginative writer's most special demand. He has always been the forerunner of science and thus scientific psychology, too.-- Sigmund Freud
"In America sex is an obsession; in other parts of the world it is a fact."-- Marlene Dietrich
"It doesn't require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder, and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed, it won't be U. S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the senate."
-- George McGovern
The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing.-- Gamel Abdel Nasser
In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.-- Groucho Marx
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."-- Theodore Roosevelt
"Americans have different ways of saying things. They say 'elevator', we say 'lift' ... they say 'President', we say 'stupid psychopathic git'...."-- Alexi Sayle
America was founded by drug smugglers -- rum was the drug, but smugglers nonetheless.
No, you may not speak freely. This is America. We have a high moral hypocrisy to uphold.-- Shannon Thomas Pricket
"Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States."-- J. Bartlett Brebner