Top 100 Best American Quotes
#1. David Burnett was the son of Martha Foley, who edited the Best American Short Stories series. She hired me to work with David and her to read stories for the anthology.
Terry Southern
#2. Profound as race prejudice is against the Negro American, it is not practically as far-reaching as the prejudice against women. For stripping away the sentimentality which makes Mother's Day and Best American Mother Contests, the truth is that women suffer all the effects of a minority.
Pearl S. Buck
#3. The best American is one who considers themselves as a citizen of the world.
Chuck D
#4. This book is the best treatment of the best American Marxist philosopher-and the best philosopher to emerge from American slums. Young Sidney Hook is essential reading for anyone interested in democratic theory and practice in America.
Cornel West
#5. At its best, American music is the soundtrack of our long - and often painful - march toward a more perfect union.
Shawn Amos
#6. I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.
Mark Strand
#7. Hollywood movies of the Fifties, like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, with their epic clash of pagan and Judeo-Christian cultures, tell more about art and society than the French-infatuated ideologues who have made a travesty of the best American higher criticism.
Camille Paglia
#8. Future historians trying to determine what it was like to be alive in fin de millennium America should read the last two decades of O. Henry and Best American short-story collections.
Gary Krist
#9. I think The Exorcist is the best American horror movie ever made. Friedkin was at the top of his game.
Jason Patric
#10. The best American writers have come from the hinterlands
Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even went to college.
Edward Abbey
#11. Thank you for the music, Sleater-Kinney. This gang of three was the best American punk rock band ever. Ever.
Rob Sheffield
#12. I really love Robert Duvall, who I think is maybe the best American actor. I love Robert Duvall because the ability that he has to change and do the most amazing work.
William Forsythe
#13. The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older - intelligence and good manners.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#14. Anyone who tells you that one political party has a monopoly on the best defense of our nation is committing a fraud on the American people.
Wesley Clark
#15. My fellow citizens, our nation is poised for greatness. We must do what we know is right, and do it with all our might. Let history say of us: "These were golden years - when the American Revolution was reborn, when freedom gained new life, and America reached for her best."
Ronald Reagan
#16. We are currently working on new policies to protect and create American jobs, particularly by improving education. We need more information in order to find the best solutions to this increasing concern for American families.
Dan Lipinski
#17. The best way to get a sense of what kinds of emergencies might present themselves in your community is by contacting local chapters of the American Red Cross or offices of emergency management in the region or state. Most large cities will have their own offices of emergency management.
Irwin Redlener
#18. The Trail of Tears has a great deal of meaning for every person of American Indian ancestry, whether they are Cherokee or not. For me, it has always stood for what is best and worst about the history of the United States.
Joseph Bruchac
#19. Let me announce this to the American people tonight one of the best things about this debate, as a Democrat from Massachusetts, I have proposed eliminating, getting rid of the alternative minimum tax.
Richard Neal
#20. It is a rare American who does not have some story about how music has made our lives richer and more interesting, how it has changed our moods, brought out the best in our character and even sometimes helped us earn a living.
Lamar Alexander
#21. The best thing about being President is that it gets you out of American life. I don't know what the theory is behind this, but it is a fact. The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off to a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him.
Russell Baker
#22. Henry Kissinger is perhaps the best-known American statesman of the 20th century.
Saul David
#23. Why, on my mother's birthday, am I thinking about 'Father Knows Best?' At our house, mother knew best at least as often as father did, but then the title of the old sitcom, a homogenized portrait of American family life, was meant to be slightly sardonic.
Tom Shales
#24. America's military is the best in the world, but this president [Barack Obama] is hollowing out our military. We need a commander in chief that believes in American exceptionalism again.
Bobby Jindal
#25. Right now the best way that I can impact the world is through entertainment. One day, and that day will come, I can impact the world through politics. The great news is that I am American, therefore I can become President. But don't forget: I am G.I. Joe.
Dwayne Johnson
#26. In the past generation, the American educational system has decided not to seek the very best teachers, give them lots of kids to teach, and pay them more - which would help children the most. It has decided to hire every teacher it can get its hands on and pay them less.
Malcolm Gladwell
#27. The American people know that every day 3,000 kids begin to smoke, 1,000 of them die an early death. They're not going to allow us to go forward this year and not have comprehensive bipartisan legislation. It's in everybody's best interest.
Erskine Bowles
#29. The American people are among the most productive in the world. We have the best technologies. We have great universities. We have entrepreneurs.
Ben Bernanke
#30. In the best traditions of American comedy, from its beginnings through the crash-bang comedies of the 1990s and 2000s, Leslie Nielsen skewered the otherwise proper, did it with mischievous delight and convulsed audiences mercilessly.
Tom Shales
#31. Asia is the continent rhythm forgot. At best Asian music is off-brand American pop, like Sonny Bono in a karaoke bar. At worst Asian music sounds as if a truck full of wind chimes collided
with a stack of empty oil drums during a birdcall contest.
P. J. O'Rourke
#32. There's no mistaking the fact that some of the best longform fiction out there now is in American television. 'The Wire' and 'Deadwood' and 'The Sopranos.'
Kevin Barry
#33. If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers.
Matthew Arnold
#34. Cities can be places that represent the best of our ideals: where Americans of all different backgrounds can come together and, through their interactions, and even through their unity, spawn true American greatness.
Cory Booker
#35. The only true development in American recreational resources is the development of the perceptive faculty in Americans. All of the other acts we grace by that name are, at best, attempts to retard or mask the process of dilution.
Aldo Leopold
#36. The American attitude is 'We're the best'. That's why the NBA guys who come from other countries, the Europeans, all sort of stick together away from the game.
Andrew Bogut
#37. I think Mr. Cosby has always been very much an activist and a big proponent of African-American pride. That's how 'The Cosby Show' came about. I think in his older years, he has gotten a lot more direct and vocal about it. But I think he only wants the best for all of us.
Keshia Knight Pulliam
#38. When you translate the American writers who are best with dialogue into German - someone like Elmore Leonard, or Tom Wolfe, who's also quite good with dialogue. It's very hard to translate them well.
Daniel Kehlmann
#39. I guess my biggest failure was not getting reelected. [The loss taught me] not to ever let American hostages be held for 444 days in a foreign country without extracting them. I did the best I could, but I failed.
Jimmy Carter
#40. I have never had the lust to meet famous authors; the best of them is in their books.
Michael Gold
#41. Mom's a hypochondriac, too, so the best part was that every week she would get the disease that the medical shows were dramatizing. I'll never forget, they did an episode on sickle cell anemia, which as far as I know, is almost exclusively an African-American affliction.
Kathy Griffin
#42. I mean, the notion that we must love everything in this country or get out and go someplace else is ridiculous. I mean, if you
the best thing a patriotic American can do is to look and be critical and find out what's wrong and try to make it better. That's what a patriotic American does.
Andy Rooney
#43. I've said before that the Ryder Cup is not the European Tour versus the American Tour. It's Europe's best golfers against the US.
Lee Westwood
#44. Persuading the people to vote against their own best interests has been the awesome genius of the
American political elite from the beginning.
Gore Vidal
#45. I have heard Mr. Romney's speech's many times on television and the radio and I have even read his book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness and I must say that out of all the gentleman running for the presidency Mr. Romney is, in my opinion, the best one to fit the bill.
Angela Lansbury
#46. Let each one of us say, 'I am an American. I intend to stay an American. I will do my best to wipe from my heart hate, rancor and political prejudice. I will sustain my government. And, through good days or bad, I will try to serve my country.'
Stephen Vincent Benet
#47. An interviewer asked me what book I thought best represented the modern American woman. All I could think of to answer was: Madame Bovary.
Joseph McCarthy
#48. Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can.
Arthur Ashe
#49. The best thing going for us is Al Gore. I cannot conceive how the American people could elect him. On the other hand, I couldn't conceive how they could elect a Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton - especially Clinton in '96.
Lyn Nofziger
#50. I am just absolutely convinced that the best formula for giving us peace and preserving the American way of life is freedom, limited government, and minding our own business overseas.
Ron Paul
#51. Tom Paine was a great American visionary. His book, Common Sense, sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in a population of four or five million. That means it was a best seller for years. People were thoughtful then. Hope is one thing. But you need to have hope with thought.
Studs Terkel
#52. The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been.
George F. Kennan
#53. It is an article of faith with the Democrats that they must fool Americans by simulating agreement with normal people. The winner of the Democratic primary is always the candidate who does the best impersonation of an American.
Ann Coulter
#54. Whoever rises to deliver the inaugural Address of 2013 will speak to a nation in which the American Dream is under profound economic and cultural pressure. This is perhaps best measured by the state of the middle class.
Jon Meacham
#55. I love the idea of a beautiful neighborhood that represents the very best of American values, but also as a fun backdrop to some darker, deliciously sneaky things going on in people's lives.
Marc Cherry
#56. Somehow, the greater the public opposition to the health care bill, the more determined they seem to force it on us anyway. Their attitude shows Washington at its very worst - the presumption that they know best, and they're going to get their way whether the American people like it or not.
Scott Brown
#57. There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.
Michael Moore
#58. The Center for American Progress rates Maryland as the best state in the nation for women. I couldn't agree more.
Martin O'Malley
#59. On our American tour bus, the bunks are a bit taller so that we don't bash our heads. On the English bus, we bash our heads every morning. It's not the best thing to do first thing when you wake up.
Liam Payne
#60. Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.
Robert Morgan
#61. We do have Museums of African American Art in the United States, and there is a National Museum of Women's Art. However, I believe Latinos are best served by displaying their art next to the art of other groups, particularly North American, European, and even Asian artists.
Mari Carmen Ramirez
#62. I can never be anything else but an American, and I must think of the United States first, and when I think of the United States first in an arrangement like this I am thinking of what is best for the world, for if the United States fails the best hopes of mankind fail with it.
Henry Cabot Lodge
#63. All I will say is that there are particular features of the American constitutional system that renders a third party futile - at best.
Todd Gitlin
#64. There is nothing stronger than the American labor movement. United, we cannot and we will not be turned aside. We'll work for it, sisters and brothers. We'll stand for it. Together. Each of us. To bring out the best in America. To bring out the best in ourselves, and each other.
Richard Trumka
#65. Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy.
Bill Gates
#66. 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
#67. I'm American to the core. So please forgive me if I say some foolish things when I'm overseas. It's my birthright." The Best Way--El Camino de Santiago (2012)
Bill Walker
#68. It seems like the best escape games come from Japan for some reason. It makes me proud.
Denis Markell
#69. The best way to improve the American workforce in the 21st century is to invest in early childhood education, to ensure that even the most disadvantaged children have the opportunity to succeed along side their more advantaged peers
James Heckman
#71. Why is it that the best terrorists, the worst enemies, and the most dangerous people in the world always seem to be schooled in the North American Confederation?" Weston asked.
Evan Currie
#72. North American cinema is the only true weapon of mass destruction. It has achieved to convince the audience not only that it's the best possible cinema, but that it is the only.
Arturo Ripstein
#73. How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times.
Maya Angelou
#74. The Simpsons is the best thing on American television.
Stephen Hawking
#75. The issue for me is American competitiveness, and how do we best create a climate here that allows international capital to come to these shores to create jobs.
Vito Fossella
#76. Any story worth telling has been embellished a little bit, Skyco, but the best stories are born from an honest seed that simply grows a little in the retelling of it.
Jennifer Frick-Ruppert
#77. Playing with numbers was still considered taboo, a subject best left to the later years, despite America's obvious and enduring math handicap. For too long, what American
Amanda Ripley
#78. Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American Dream. And our current government programs, offer at best only a partial solution. They help people deal with poverty, but they do not help them escape it.
Marco Rubio
#79. Here you had the top professional soldier in Japan, and to think he didn't know how to kill himself with a gun! They took him straight to the hospital, he got the best care the American medical team could give him, recovered, then was tried and hanged. It's a terrible way to die.
Haruki Murakami
#80. Everyone gives much more and the receipts are considerable. Typical of American generosity. Their hospitality, their cordiality are like that too, spontaneous and without affectation. It's what's best in them.
Albert Camus
#81. Jewel moved 432,000 hardcover copies of A Night Without Armor, thereby making her the best-selling American poet of the past fifty years.
Chuck Klosterman
#82. Theatre for a New Audience is one of America's most admirable and exciting theatre companites ... some of the best acted and directed work to be found on American stages, engaging with the canon of world dramatic literature in a vigorous way.
Tony Kushner
#83. At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester's works and the little urn that contains my mother's ashes.
Wilbur Smith
#84. Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful.
David Del Tredici
#85. I simply want to do what I can to have the best Congress possible representing the American people.
Jim Moran
#86. I say to my colleagues never confine your best work, your hopes, your dreams, the aspiration of the American people to what will be signed by George W. Bush because that is too limiting a factor.
Nancy Pelosi
#87. Trying to be the best. Failing. Getting back up. Those characteristics are going to allow you to make great decisions. They are going to allow you to compete. They are going to allow you to achieve your best. That's the American dream.
Ronnie Lott
#88. Putting together a sustainable budget requires that we all work together, that we focus our scarce resources on key priorities, and that we strengthen our capacity to deliver the best product we can for the American people. And that takes money.
Roy Blunt
#89. To show the American woman herself off to best advantage - that has always been my aim and that is my real biography.
Hattie Carnegie
#90. For me, I'm just trying to be the best at what I do. I'll wave an Asian American flag if I get that opportunity. I'm not hiding or trying to discredit my background or anything, I just haven't had the opportunity.
Chad Hugo
#91. In the mid-1950s Winston Churchill advised his American friends to recognize that Ho Chi Minh was unbeatable, accept his victory, and try to make the best of it. This the Dulles brothers could not do - because they were Americans.
Stephen Kinzer
#92. Ranger is Cuban-American with skin the color of a mocha latte, heavy on the mocha, and a body that can best be described as yum.
Janet Evanovich
#93. Mr. Speaker, democracy works best when the American electorate is engaged and informed.
Melissa Bean
#94. but after WWII, politics began to impede American war fighting to the extent that victory is fleeting at best and unlikely at worst.
Billy Vaughn
#95. For 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona,' for example, Woody Allen is one of the greatest American directors, and we really had a very good working relationship. We understand each other really well. He gave me one of the best opportunities somebody has ever given me in my career.
Penelope Cruz
#96. I love to discuss WWI American Trench Watches. If you have a question about one of my books, a Waltham Trench Watch or an Elgin Trench Watch drop me a line through my web page at LRF Antique Watches. I'll do my best to get back with you quickly!
Stan Czubernat
#97. There's a growing consensus that the best way to defeat communism in Cuba is to get its citizens hooked on American goods.
Timothy Noah
#98. Most of the best music in American history was made by people with no options.
Isaac Brock
#99. We need to make sure and that we can continue to move forward in creating jobs and getting the economy turned around. The best way to do that is to make sure that we can get Congress to adopt the American Jobs Act.
Mitt Romney
#100. A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.
Ronald Reagan
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