America is the world's living myth. There's no
sense of wrong when you kill an American or
blame America for some local disaster. This is
our function, to be character types, to embody
recurring themes that people can use to comfort
themselves, justify themselves and so on. We're
here to accommodate. Whatever people need, we
provide. A myth is a useful thing.
-- Don Delillo
1926-, American
Author
If
its individual citizens, to a man, are to be
believed, it always is depressed, and always is
stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis,
and never was otherwise; though as a body, they
are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists, at
any hour of the day or night, that it is the
most thriving and prosperous of all countries on
the habitable globe.
-- Charles
Dickens
1812-1870,
British Novelist
Americans cannot realize how many chances for
mental improvement they lose by their inveterate
habit of keeping six conversations when there
are twelve in the room.
-- Ernest Dimnet
1866-1954, French
Clergyman
I
like America, just as everybody else does. I
love America, I gotta say that. But America will
be judged.
-- Bob Dylan
1941-, American
Musician, Singer, Songwriter