American Quotes

So by the time I got to Michigan I was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.

Once you begin to explain or excuse all events on racial grounds, you begin to indulge in the perilous mythology of race.

My grandmother though, began to prepare in her own neurotic - and I think psychotic - way to face racism. So she taught us to be racist, which is something I had to undo later when I got to Michigan, you know.

I was an adopted child of my grandparents, and I don't know how I can ever express my gratitude for that, because my parents would have been a mess, you know.

I don't ever want to be a sentimentalist. I prefer to be a realist. I'm not a romantic really.

It has to be real, and I think a lot of the problems we have as a society is because we don't acknowledge that family is important, and it has to be people who are present, you know, and mothers and fathers, both are not present enough with children.

My grandmother had the most dramatic effect on my life because she set me in one direction, and I had to go back the other direction for my sanity, and for my ability to be a social human being.

More and more, when I single out the person out who inspired me most, I go back to my grandfather.

One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.

No one asked me to be an actor, so no one owed me. There was no entitlement.

The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will loose.

When he died, Emerson was thought of as the representative American writer par excellence, and his point of view was still so potent that William James was honored to be asked to speak at a centenary celebration.

Emerson was the chief figure in the American transcendental movement, a fact that complicates all accounts of him in literary or cultural history.

Emerson then incarnated the moral optimism, the progress, and the energy of the American spirit.

Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.

I, for one, hope that youth will again revolt and again demoralize the dead weight of conformity that now lies upon us.

I am the sum total of everything that I have experienced musically.

Country fans need to support country music by buying albums and concert tickets for traditional artists or the music will just fade away. And that would be really sad.

The easiest way to solve a problem is to pick an easy one.

The British have a remarkable talent for keeping calm, even when there is no crisis.

One trouble with developing speed reading skills is that by the time you realize a book is boring you've already finished it.

It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon; which raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to.

Experience is that marvelous thing that enable you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

Anybody who finds it easy to make money on the horses is probably in the dog food business.

An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.

You're an old-timer if you can remember when setting the world on fire was a figure of speech.

When you get something for nothing, you just haven't been billed for it yet.

Sex is a two-way treat.

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're going to catch you in next.

A fanatic is one who sticks to his guns whether they're loaded or not.