American Quotes

It is always open season on Christian and on white folks because they are the group you can kick and you can get away with it. It is politically correct.

Indeed, there are so many prejudices against everyday middle-class values on college campuses, and serving in the military and being pro-American just seems to be one of them.

If we change the definition of marriage to be more inclusive, then it is logical to argue that we should broaden the definition so that won't exclude anyone.

I wish that the Democrats would put some effort into Social Security reform, illegal immigration's reform, tax reform, or some of the other real issues that are out there.

I welcome the Democrats' ideas on Social Security. I think it is very important to make a bipartisan reform.

I used to live in Ethiopia as a child, and I lived there when Haile Selassie was the emperor.

I think Social Security should be bipartisan and it should transcend the next election, and you should get the best ideas of the Democrats and of the Republicans, and move forward with the best.

From a monarchy followed by suffering under Communism, Ethiopians must be given the opportunity to flourish under the greatest of systems - democracy.

But whether a couple is a man and a woman has everything to do with the meaning of marriage.

In Ethiopia, democracy is in its infancy and it must be nurtured along by its leaders.

Finally, I want to make the point that we are Republicans. We are the majority. It is going to be a little more difficult because we have to govern and come up with ideas.

This is the time to pull together as a Nation, as different people from all over the States with different perspectives and different social statuses and different income brackets, to unify into one and help those on the ground who need our help the most.

Frivolous lawsuits are booming in this county. The U.S. has more costs of litigation per person than any other industrialized nation in the world, and it is crippling our economy.

Marriage is an institution fits in perfect harmony with the laws of nature; whereas systems of slavery and segregation were designed to brutally oppress people and thereby violated the laws of nature.

Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society.

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

Every time I write a new novel about something sombre and sobering and terrible I think, 'oh Lord, they're not going to want to go here'. But they do. Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brave.

Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had a contract for my first novel - that was on my answering phone message when I got back from the hospital with my first child.

At home, growing up, we weren't really poor. We had everything we needed, we just didn't have what we wanted.

The truth needs so little rehearsal.

The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your brains and in your hands, wherever you go... It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

Small change, small wonders - these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life.

People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.

It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.

I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I see an importance in that. It's a relief to accept that not everything is under your control.

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.

There's always a part of your nation's history that you haven't been told that... has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe.