here are some that my american friends have swopped with me over the ages.
"Let us talk sense to the American people. Let us tell them the truth, that there are not gains without pains." Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno
"I love the United States, but I see here everything is measured by success, by how much money it makes, not the satisfaction to the individual." John Fellows
"When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, "Ours." Father Andrew SDC
"We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans." Reubin Askew
"Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic." (Enoch) Arnold Bennett
"The Constitution of the United States is not a mere lawyers' document; it is a vehicle of life, and its spirit is always the spirit of the age." Nadia Boulanger
"One survey found that ten percent of Americans thought Joan of Arc was Noah's wife...." Robert Whitney Boynton
"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you." Rita Mae Brown
"This American system of ours . . . call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it." Al Capone
"My rackets are run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way." Al Capone
"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." William Orville Douglas
"The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being." Albert Einstein
"Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves." Albert Einstein
"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion." Dwight David Eisenhower
"What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others." Carlos Fuentes
"We Americans have no commission from God to police the world." Benjamin Harrison
"We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them." Lillian Hellman
"Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams." Mary Ellen Kelly
"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered. For the American citadel is a man. Not man in general. Not man in the abstract. Not the majority of men. But man. That man. His worth. His uniqueness." Archibald MacLeish
"America: Where a man can say what he thinks, if he isn't afraid of his wife, his boss, his customer, his neighbors, or the government." Joe Moore
