Because systems of mass communication can communicate only officially acceptable levels of reality, no one can know the extent of the secret unconscious life. No one in America can know what will happen. No one is in real control.
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America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes?...
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In December 2004, the Osage Nation of Oklahoma won its battle in Congress to determine our own laws and citizenship, ... It was the end of a long road to independence for our tribe, but the beginning of what we feel is most precious: our sovereignty. I am often asked if gaming has taken over the national debate on Indians in America. But gaming is an extension of our sovereignty, not the other way around and we cannot allow others to frame our issues for us. As Indian people, sovereignty comes first.
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I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.
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America, why are your libraries full of tears?
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After thoughtful deliberations with my family, I am announcing my decision to withdraw from the World Baseball Classic. When faced with the decision to choose between my country, the United States of America, and my Dominican heritage, I decided I will not dishonor either.
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The gap between ideals and actualities, between dreams and achievements, the gap that can spur strong men to increased exertions, but can break the spirit of others -- this gap is the most conspicuous, continuous land mark in American history. It is conspicuous and continuous not because Americans achieve little, but because they dream grandly. The gap is a standing reproach to Americans; but it marks them off as a special and singularly admirable community among the world's peoples.
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In order to be able to live in America I must be unafraid to live anywhere in it, and I must be able to live in the fashion and with whom I choose.
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The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch. Love comes into it too, of course, but in Europe we tend to see marital love as an eternity which encompasses hate and also indifference: when we promise to love we really mean that we promise to honor a contract. Americans, seeming to take marriage with not enough seriousness, are really taking love and sex with too much.
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President Reagan was a formidable political campaigner, who provided an inspirational voice to America when our people were searching for a clear message of hope and confidence,
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At this time in American history, we are like ghosts talking gibberish through different dimensions, and stupid men do not make good make good...
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The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line -- the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.
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At one time or another I have insulted everybody, and I am proud of that. Folks, let me sum it up for you: I think religion is bad, and drugs are good. I think America causes cancer, longevity is less important than fun and young people should be discouraged from voting. I think stereotypes are true, abstinence is a pervsion, Bush’s lies are worse than Clinton’s and there is nothing sexy about being old or pregnant. I think 9-11 changed nothing, and if I had known the onset of war would add a hundred points on to Bush’s IQ, I would have started one. I think pornography stops rape, I think AIDS ribbons are stupid, and flag burning makes me feel patriotic. I think death is not the worst thing that can happen. I think people have too much self-esteem, and being drunk is funny. I think children are not innocent, God doesn’t write books, and Jesus wasn’t a republican. I am for mad cow disease, and against suing tobacco companies. I think girls hate each other, no doesn’t always mean no, you have to lie to stay married, women’s sports are boring, and the Olympics are gay. We’ll be on for another six weeks here on ABC…
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A trait no other nation seems to possess in quite the same degree that we do -- namely, a feeling of almost childish injury and resentment unless the world as a whole recognizes how innocent we are of anything but the most generous and harmless intentions.
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A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
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The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their Hub, as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustles and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there.
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Regarding the Boy Scouts, I'm very suspicious of any organization that has a handbook
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Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. referring to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
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America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still.
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God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.
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Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace; and America is just ourselves with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.
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America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.
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America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
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I've always wondered why European politicians as a group seemed brighter than American politicians as a group. Maybe it's because many America...
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In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.
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To exclude from positions of trust and command all those below the age of 44 would have kept Jefferson from writing the Declaration of Independence, Washington from commanding the Continental Army, Madison from fathering the Constitution, Hamilton from serving as secretary of the treasury, Clay from being elected speaker of the House and Christopher Columbus from discovering America.
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My thinking had been opened up wide in Mecca. I wrote long letters to my friends, in which I tried to convey to them my new insights into the American black man’s struggle and his problems as well as the depths of my search for truth and justice. “I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda,” I had written to these friends. “I am for truth, no matter who tells it. I am for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I am a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” The American white man’s press called me the angriest Negro in America. I wouldn’t deny that charge; I spoke exactly as I felt. I believe in anger. I believe it is a crime for anyone who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself. I am for violence if non-violence means that we continue postponing or even delaying a solution to the American black man’s problem. White man hates to hear anybody, especially a black man, talk about the crime that the white man perpetrated on the black man. But let me remind you that when the white man came into this country, he certainly wasn’t demonstrating non-violence.
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I take space to be the central fact to man born in America. I spell it large because it comes large here. Large and without mercy.
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In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics.
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Was I gung-ho about changing society when I was 18? I don't know about that. When you're 18, you're really into yourself and what's happening to your body. But I definitely had some ideas. This malaise is not confined to America either. I spotted that same attitude in kids in Eastern Europe before the fall of communism.
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