America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.

George, I know you’re tired. But President Lincoln, he didn’t free us to be lazy and no good. He freed us to work hard a — George Dawson, Life Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98

On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atoneme — Brandi L. Bates

One can't step into the river twice — Ann Howard Creel, Call Me the Canyon: A Love Story

My ultimate authority would be the school librarian Mrs. Greenbacher. — Shawn Stewart Ruff, Finlater

Kill the body and the head will die. — Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

To Americans, either/or means both. — Brian Spellman, If the mind fits, shrink it

I expected, as I approached the corporate world, to enter a brisk, logical, nonsense-free zone, almost like the military — Barbara Ehrenreich, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

People believe what they want to believe. Even if it isn’t true. — Julian Houston, New Boy

Washingtonians love the "So-and-so is spinning in his grave" cliché. Someone is always speculating about how some great — Mark Leibovich, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral — plus plenty of valet parking! — in America’s Gilded Capital

$Television hols up a mirror to the true nature of family life today. For the first time people see themselves reflected and refracted within its curved glass screen: helping them to define who the are — a rescheduling of life in the suburban living room has taken place.$

They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their ne — Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

Her hope was to preserve what she called The Way, to keep it alive, for that future moment when the current obsession wi — Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

More “America” Quotes