Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot.

To say that the United States has pursued diplomacy with North Korea is a little bit misleading. It did under the Clinton administration, though neither side completely lived up to their obligations. Clinton didn’t do what was promised, nor did North Korea, but they were making progress.

Obscenity comes from grime.

I grew up in a very nice house in Houston, went to private school all my life and I’ve never even been to the ‚hood. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‚hood.

Our society strives to avoid any possibility of offending anyone – except God.

We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

The greatest thrill in my life was to represent the United States of America.

The notion that it is improper to look beyond the borders of the United States in grappling with hard questions has a certain kinship to the view that the U.S. Constitution is a document essentially frozen in time as of the date of its ratification.

Taylor Swift’s audience can listen to me, but so can the street kids. I want to touch it all.

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.

The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood – rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky – they all turn out in one day.

One-third of the people in the United States promote, while the other two-thirds provide.

We are all different. There is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit.

In the spring of 1929, I returned to the United States. I was homesick for this country. I had learned in my student days a great deal about the new physics. I wanted to pursue this myself, to explain it, and to foster its cultivation.

I’m half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That’s why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I’ve seen so many.

The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.

China is a great manufacturing center, but it’s actually mostly an assembly plant. So it assembles parts and components, high technology that comes from the surrounding industrial – more advanced industrial centers – Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Europe – and it basically assembles them.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

There are a lot of good women in New York.

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

I really love the culture of hip-hop.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

Now you have a choice: we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America.

To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.

The White House is the finest prison in the world.

I don’t think it is so difficult to solve the problems between Cuba and the United States; it all depends on whether there is a dialogue, a discussion, or if the prejudices and hatred of people like the extremists and terrorists from the Cuban community, who try to impose their policies, prevail.

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.

We believe that every single child has boundless promise, no matter who they are, where they come from, or how much money their parents have. We’ve got to remember that. We believe that each of these young people is a vital part of the great American story.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

Our goal in the ’70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I don’t know that there is much the United States can do except work with the international community.

Any negotiated, peaceful solution to the problems between the United States and peoples, or any people of Latin America, which does not imply force or the use of force, must be addressed in accordance with international principles and norms.

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.

Many Tibetans sacrifice their lives.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America, there are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.

Ladies and gentlemen, god bless America – land of the free, home of the brave.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

Being beautiful is not so fun when you’re in a business with all men.

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?

If I hadn’t been President of the United States, I probably would have ended up a piano player in a bawdy house.

All fat women look the same; they all look 42.

When America stopped importing from China, China stopped importing from the rest of the world. This affects Asian countries as well as Australia, Brazil, and other suppliers of raw materials.

I’m not afraid to look like a big, hairy, smelly, foreign devil in Tokyo, though I do my best not to, I really do.

Y’all are so cute and y’all talk so proper over here. I love England.

It is important that the United States remain a two-party system. I’m a fellow who likes small parties and the Republican Party can’t be too small to suit me.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

No, I’m not a French designer either. I’m from nowhere. I’m a European, old European is all I am.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

I’m tri-racial: African-American, Native American and Euro – that’s the Scotch-Irish part.

Honestly, I like everything, boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.