American System Quotes

#1. Is it possible for white America to really understand blacks' distrust of the legal system, their fears of racial profiling and the police, without understanding how cheap a black life was for so long a time in our nation's history?

Philip Dray

#2. Our democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.

Al Gore

#3. The ability of the 1 percent to buy politicians and regulators is nothing new in American politics - just as inequality has been a permanent part of our economic system. This is true of virtually all political and economic systems.

Eric Alterman

#4. The prison industrial system, things like that are cleverly put in place to attempt to marginalize a certain group of people - and it's not only black, it's replete across the American society.

Keith Stanfield

#5. Even though I studied in New York and I know the American system, I come from France where I learned that with movies in France where the director is king. There's no such thing as a studio edit. It's the director's cut, period.

Louis Leterrier

#6. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society?

Tim Matheson

#7. If sexual intercourse, as the poets tell us, began in 1963, it was another decade and a half before the American political system began to take notice.

Michael Kinsley

#8. The science fair has long been a favorite educational tool in the American school system, and for a good reason: Your teachers hate you.

Dave Barry

#9. In Chicago and across the country, whites looking to achieve the American dream could rely on a legitimate credit system backed by the government. Blacks were herded into the sights of unscrupulous lenders who took them for money and for sport.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#10. I also think that there is a huge failure in the American education system to educate Americans about where we, our system, our government, came from. And to some extent this failure is shared in places like Britain and Canada and Australia.

Michael Scheuer

#11. One in three young African American men is currently under the control of the criminal justice system - in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole - yet mass incarceration tends to be categorized as a criminal justice issue as opposed to a racial justice or civil rights issue (or crisis)

Michelle Alexander

#12. [A new all-encompassing national identification system] contradicts some of our most sacrosanct American principles of personal liberty and expectations of privacy and is far in excess of what is needed to provide us with the security and protections we all want.

Bill McCollum

#13. Black people are dying in this country because we have a criminal justice system which is out of control, a system in which over 50% of young African-American kids are unemployed, it is estimated that a black baby born today has a one in four chance of ending up in the criminal justice system.

Bernie Sanders

#14. We are inclined to confuse freedom and democracy, which we regard as moral principles, with the way in which they are practiced in America with capitalism, federalism, and the two-party system, which are not moral principles but simply the preferred and accepted practices of the American people.

J. William Fulbright

#15. The American political system is not good at trading sacrifice now to prevent crises later.

Ezra Klein

#16. Imagine a legal immigration system that welcomes and celebrates those who come to achieve the American dream.

Ted Cruz

#17. The free electoral process is one of the things that outsiders envy most about this country.The distinctly American two-party system is perpetuated through that process.

Robert A. Agresta

#18. When power corrupts, it keeps a log of its progress, written into that most sensitive memory device, the human face. Who could withstand the light? What viewer could believe in the war, the system, the countless lies about American freedom, looking into these mugs shots of the bought and sold?

Thomas Pynchon

#19. Celebrity is a big part of the American social system. I'm certainly grateful for what it's done for me, but I do think that celebrity is overdone in our society. I think it's got a dangerous side to it.

Robert Redford

#20. In 1971, after seven years in college, with that magic piece of paper clutched triumphantly in my fist, the best job I was able to get was night watchman on a sewer project in Babylon, N.Y. guarding a hole in the ground to prevent anyone from stealing it. God bless the American educational system!

Spider Robinson

#21. Once brave politicians and others explain the war on drugs' true cost, the American people will scream for a cease-fire. Bring the troops home, people will urge. Treat drugs as a health problem, not as a matter for the criminal justice system.

Larry Elder

#22. Part of America's greatness is its willingness to care for those who are truly in need. But those who defraud the system take money and resources away not only from American taxpayers but also from those who truly need help.

Gary Bauer

#23. It's a historical phenomenon that in 250 years, a nation could move from a colony into the most prosperous nation of the world and the leader of the world. It is indeed an achievement, a tribute to the talent of the American nation, the American people and an optimal political and economic system.

Vladimir Putin

#24. I think that one thing that people are missing is that we are never going to be able to fix this country's [American] economy in the long run until we fix our public education system.

Michelle Rhee

#25. When fraternities are not allowed, Communism flourishes. Young men who are inexperienced but have faith are more useful than older, experienced men without faith. The fraternity system is a bastion of American strength.

Barry Goldwater

#26. Republican voters believe we should have a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest. They don't believe we should enter into - commit the United States to further globalist policies that diminish the sovereignty and freedom of American to act in its own interest.

Jeff Sessions

#27. Homelessness is a part of our American system. There should be nothing wrong with this condition as long as the individual is not sentenced to unnecessary suffering and punishment.

Jerzy Kosinski

#28. My own family basically did what the American justice system does: I was given more lenient treatment than the black kids.

Trevor Noah

#29. The politics, policies, the President [Barack Obama] and the American people are all pointing in the right direction to fix our immigration system and pass legislation this year.

Luis Gutierrez

#30. There is no way for the American economic system to function without advertising. There is no other way to communicate enough information about enough products to enough people with enough speed.

John O'Toole

#31. I'm a great believer in the competitive system, and think that competition will bring us greater innovation and put American industry in information ahead of everyone also.

Harold H. Greene

#32. Super PACs and a corrupt campaign finance system are destroying American democracy. We're proud that we have received four million individual contributions, more than any candidate in American history at this point.

Bernie Sanders

#33. The genius of the American Founders was to create an intricate system of balanced powers both within the state and between state and society - a system that has fostered unprecedented political, social, and intellectual freedom.

Nancy Pearcey

#34. And the American political spectrum is constrained by the expediencies of a two-party system that suppresses the potential emergence of breakaway movements responding to fleeting senses of urgency or perceived rigidity in the mainstream parties.

Justin Gest

#35. I couldn't swear that I believed in the law - or in the American legal system.

Felice Picano

#36. A world in which others controlled the course of their own development, would be a world in which the American system would be seriously endangered.

Benjamin Cohen

#37. I'm very hopeful that we'll see some change in our food system. I don't know how far we'll go, or how quickly we'll get there, but there is no question that a significant percentage of the American public is dissatisfied with the food system.

Michael Pollan

#38. Wilderness, like the national park system, was an American idea.

Stewart Udall

#39. When I was young, most teachers of philosophy in British and American universities were Hegelians, so that, until I read Hegel, I supposed there must be some truth to his system; I was cured, however, by discovering that everything he said on the philosophy of mathematics was plain nonsense.

Bertrand Russell

#40. When you live in Washington, D.C., you do get a sense, in a very direct way, of the durability of our government and really, the greatness of the American system.

Mark Leibovich

#41. One of the great failings of the American education system (in our view) is that young people can graduate from university without any understanding of poverty at home or abroad.

Nicholas D. Kristof

#42. It was under Wilson, of course, that the first huge parts of the Marxist program, such as the progressive income tax, were incorporated into the American system.

Robert W. Welch Jr.

#43. Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.

Richard Mitchell

#44. Most young people now are very vulnerable as to what the American film aficionados are going to say. They care too much about a system that has no room for them. It's really a serious issue for me, because to me it's, how do I survive beyond a film that was disgraced or praised?

Haile Gerima

#45. In the American political system, you're only allowed to have real ideas if it's absolutely guaranteed that you can't win an election

P. J. O'Rourke

#46. The failure of the family court system in America is a national scandal. Sadly, the mainstream media, whether out of ignorance or fear, refuses to cover it. That media silence means that every day, these American human rights abuses continue to occur.

Garland Waller

#47. I think the American system is incredibly well developed. I think the founding fathers were geniuses.

Marc Andreessen

#48. Populism is the simple premise that markets need to be restrained by society and by a democratic political system. We are not socialists or communists, we are proponents of regulated capitalism and, I might add, people who have read American history.

Molly Ivins

#49. Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to end the debacle of putting the world's greatest care system in the hands of federal bureaucrats and putting those bureaucrats between an American citizen and her doctor.

Chris Christie

#50. Got it. You're fourteen. I'm proud you can count that high. It's a testament to the modern American education system. But I should probable point out that you're not the only one. I'm told you go to a school with a whole class of-get this-kids who are fourteen.- Ash

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#51. I came into American politics and into this political system proud of politics and the way we make decisions.

Byron Dorgan

#52. The problem with the American health-care system that it is not working for the American family.

John F. Kerry

#53. The American system of democracy is founded on the concept that every citizen has the right to vote, to know that their vote is counted, and that the vote is counted accurately.

Barbara Mikulski

#54. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help ... Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Barack Obama

#55. The dollar represents a one dollar debt to the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve Banks create money out of thin air to buy Government Bonds from the U.S. Treasury ... and has created out of nothing a ... debt which the American people are obliged to pay with interest.

Wright Patman

#56. I don't know a politician who enjoys fundraising. The system is such that the American people have lost faith.

John McCain

#57. [American family court] is a system that is corrupt on his best day. It is like being tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged down a gravel late at night. No one can hear your cries and complaints and it is not over until they say it's over.

Alec Baldwin

#58. There is a reason why these people [from Wall Street] are putting huge amounts of money into our political system. And in my view, it is undermining American democracy and it is allowing Congress to represent wealthy campaign contributors and not the working families of this country.

Bernie Sanders

#59. You think you're going to impress an American jury with [your] words? In the eyes of the Americans, you're doomed. Just looking at you in an orange suit, chains, and being Muslim and Arabic is enough to convict you.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi

#60. Making improvements to our background check system and cracking down on illegal gun trafficking are common-sense ways to prevent violence without punishing law abiding gun owners. We owe it to the American people to take real action to reduce gun violence in our communities.

Martin Heinrich

#61. Throughout human history, the American Idea has done more to help the poor than any other economic system ever designed.

Paul Ryan

#62. Now, however, the educational system has become the weapon of choice for modern liberals in their project of dismantling American culture.

Robert Bork

#63. I think it's a fun thing, and perhaps maybe very so slightly as an American, it's a slightly different thing that they didn't do as much of when the show was 100 percent written by Brits just because I'm not sure they were quite as familiar with some of these little moments in our government system.

David Mandel

#64. I just didn't understand the American political system, and I felt really stupid about that.

Drew Barrymore

#65. The great thing about Watergate is, is that the system worked. The American system worked. The press did its job. We did what we were supposed to do.

Carl Bernstein

#66. Refinancing won't fix everything that's broken with our [American] higher education system. We've got to bring down the cost of college. And we need more accountability for how schools spend federal dollars.

Elizabeth Warren

#67. If anything, I don't have to convince the American public that we have a broken health-care system. I think the majority of Americans since they have to go through that health-care system, already know it.

Michael Moore

#68. You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It's just grotesque.

Gore Vidal

#69. Then, I realized that there is an indigenous presence in the Solar System. It's us. So, then, I got to wondering what would happen if a more technologically advanced society moved next door to us, the way we moved next door to the American Indians.

Sarah Zettel

#70. I believe politics is a team sport. That, for awful and unfortunate reasons beyond any of our control, the American system only allows, effectively, for two teams.

Rick Perlstein

#71. The advantage of the free market system is that people invest their capital, they create jobs by investing their capital, and hopefully they get a return on that investment. I don't think there's anything wrong with good old American capitalism.

Steve Stivers

#72. The Iranian leaders describe the American government exactly the way American analysts describe the Iranian one, as an opaque, factionalized system with competing power centers, over which the president exercises very limited authority.

Ali Khamenei

#73. American democracy and the Soviet system may peacefully exist side by side and compete with each other. But one cannot evolve into the other.

J. Stalin

#74. The American education system couldn't be more badly directed or poorly funded if the Secretary of Education were Ed Wood.

Dennis Miller

#75. The right to a trial is a core principle of the American legal system. Depriving Americans of these essential liberties undermines the Constitution while doing nothing to strengthen our national security.

John Garamendi

#76. Our port facilities should have the freedom to levy a market-based container fee which will provide new revenue and make our system more equitable to the American taxpayer and American manufacturers.

Dana Rohrabacher

#77. American agriculture is badly in need of diversity. Another threat to the food system of course is the likelihood that petroleum is not going to get any cheaper.

Wendell Berry

#78. A lot of people are deeply dissatisfied by the diminishing control they have over their lives, because of the way our system of government is set up, to cater to the powerful, cater to the wealthy, cater to the corporations, and not to the individual American citizen.

Josh Fox

#79. Our [American] money system is structurally brittle. It doesn't matter if you put a very clever guy or a stupid guy at the wheel. The clever guy will take a half hour to have an accident, and the stupid guy will take ten minutes.

Bernard Lietaer

#80. What is the pope doing inserting himself - he's the Vicar of Christ. He is the worldwide leader of the Catholic faith. What is he doing inserting himself into the American political system this way? That to me is the larger question.

Rush Limbaugh

#81. We will establish a new system that makes high-quality health care available to every American in a dignified manner and at a price he can afford.

Richard M. Nixon

#82. Over the last 25 years, the American free enterprise system created the most diverse video programming on earth with the best value for the customer. It is disappointing that the updated report relies on assumptions that are not in line with the reality of the marketplace.

Kyle E. McSlarrow

#83. In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort.

Bill Kristol

#84. After reading The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander's stunning work of scholarship, one gains the terrible realization that, for people of color, the American criminal justice system resembles the Soviet Union's gulag - the latter punished ideas, the former punishes a condition.

David Levering Lewis

#85. War has generally had grave and fateful consequences for the American monetary and financial system. We have seen that the Revolutionary War occasioned a mass of depreciated fiat paper, worthless Continentals, a huge public debt, and the beginnings of central banking in the Bank of North America.

Murray Rothbard

#86. From my point of view, the American financial system - including banks and investment banks - is far safer because of capital and liquidity requirements. Despite all the turbulence so far this year, I don't think anyone's questioning our system. And that, obviously, is a good thing.

Jamie Dimon

#87. Most people who call themselves conservatives can't explain the American value system.

Dennis Prager

#88. I have spent time discussing the American political system and current events in Taiwan with the junior diplomats, and they have repeatedly expressed their country's desire to avoid confrontation with China.

Michael K. Simpson

#89. The strength of the American higher education system is that it is a multifaceted, multi-layered system, and that is what makes us very strong.

Gordon Gee

#90. Effort should be made to see that the forum-type programs (the 'Today Show,' 'Meet the Press,' etc.) afford at least as much opportunity for supporters of the American system to participate as these programs do for those who attack it.

Lewis F. Powell Jr.

#91. The American system is a beautiful and durable thing, but flawed. I would like to think that this decadence is not sustainable, whether in the eyes of the electorate or the eyes of whatever the local economy is built on; that would bring me hope.

Mark Leibovich

#92. No economic system is perfect. But the American Free Enterprise system has empowered millions of people in the past. I know, because I saw it with my own eyes.

Marco Rubio

#93. With all its faults, the American political system is the freest and most democratic in the world.

Eldridge Cleaver

#94. I always felt that, through it all, there was a really strong, forward, positive, constructive accomplishment by the American people during that period, if you consider that during the period from 1954 to 1965, this country broke through the caste system.

John Doar

#95. I think the American university system still seems to be the best system in the world.

Clifford Geertz

#96. In the current world, with the skills needed, dropouts [like no secondary education] are condemned to being members of the underclass. In my view, this is a fault of the American school system, which is a government monopoly.

Milton Friedman

#97. No system is better than another, but some are better for certain people. The person makes a system worthwhile, not the other way around. I blended a lot of systems I had studied over the years, Judo, wrestling, boxing, Hapkido, Kenpo, Thai Boxing, American Kickboxing, Jujitsu, Aikido.

Joe R. Lansdale

#98. Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt.

Sarah Zettel

#99. Now I know what you're saying. You're saying: 'Dave, you have painted a distorted and inaccurate picture of the American health-care system. Not all patients wind up being as wretched as Mary! Many of them wind up being dead'.

Dave Barry

#100. I'm not a very good advertisement for the American school system.

David Brinkley