Us Quotes

“He was like speaking to my own reflection. Things were only between the two of us.”
― Debra Anastasia, Drowning in Stars

“Christmas brings out the best in us, so let's let us treat each day like it is Christmas.”
― Charmaine J. Forde

“With the prospect of raids on London itself, U.S. ambassador Joseph Kennedy decamped. To the great disdain of many in London, he began conducting his ambassadorial affairs from his home in the country. Within the Foreign Office, a joke began to circulate: "I always thought my daffodils were yellow until I met Joe Kennedy.”
― Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

“If you think it cannot be done, please don’t interfere or interrupt the rest of us trying to do it.”
― R.J. Intindola

“A quiet cozy night... Just us... I wish I knew then, but I'm grateful I know now... It's simply everything in life.”
― Steve Maraboli

“And I do talk a lot, obviously, about my clients; those are the people I have to advocate for, and when I say that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done, I am thinking specifically about them. But I’m also thinking about everybody else. I mean, I believe that for every human being. I think if someone tells a lie, they’re not just a liar, that if someone takes something, they’re not just a thief. If you kill someone, you’re not just a killer.

But it’s also true, a nation that committed genocide against Indigenous people, a nation that enslaved Black people for two and a half centuries, a nation that tolerated mob lynchings for nearly a century, a nation that created apartheid and segregation laws throughout most of the 20th century, can also be more than that racist history suggests.”
― Bryan Stevenson

“Despite my better sense and ample experience in post-American heartbreak. Here I am. Again. The American allure built deep into my soul pulls me along for another ride.”
― Luke Healy, Americana

“If we are to believe in a future that we cannot see, we must learn to believe in many things that we cannot see. The first thing would be God. And the second would the bit of Himself that He placed within each of us.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“It is not about me, it is about us.”
― Steven Magee

“...if you live in the United States, and you are reading this prior to November 2020, please do me a favor and (a) Register to vote, or check to make sure your registration is still valid, (b) Remember to vote on election day (or before if you take an early ballot) and (c) Try not to vote for anyone who is a whirling amoral vortex of chaos... John Scalzi October 31, 2019”
― John Scalzi, The Last Emperox

“Was I a secret not worth sharing
Or
Was I fact not worth telling?”
― Dawn Lanuza, The Last Time I'll Write About You

“The surest way to protect the Freedom of Speech is by frequently using it.”
― C.A.A. Savastano

“An Ancient Proverb Concerning the US that I Just Thought Up

A sick man with a gun still has a gun.”
― Gary J. Floyd, Eyes Open With Your Mask On

“America, you just wanted change is all, a return
To the kind of awe experiences after beholding a reign
Of gold. A leader whose metallic narcissism is a reflection
Of your own.”
― Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“America is a great country, but like every other nation on earth, it is influenced by evil. John Wilkes Booth epitomizes the evil that can harm us, even as President Abraham Lincoln represents the good that can make us stronger.”
― Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard

“Every time I feel like I uncover another layer of me with you”
― Gila Nehemia, Surreal Love: Kundalini Awakening Poetry

“Most Southeast Asia countries look to the United States to provide some sort of counterbalance to China, but they have increasing doubts about Washington’s dependability, know-how, resources, and staying power. These uncertainties affect their strategic thinking and planning in their relations with Beijing. “The U.S. needs to have a long-term consistent, comprehensive, bipartisan approach to the Asia Pacific,” says an ASEAN diplomat. “Countries in the region believe the U.S. will change its policy depending on who the next president is.”
― Murray Hiebert, Under Beijing's Shadow: Southeast Asia's China Challenge

“Readers of this book will not encounter discussions of the Middle Kingdom Syndrome, China’s concept of tianxia (“all under heaven”), imperial China’s tributary system, or strategizing as reflected by the board game wei ch’i. These ideas are not entirely irrelevant to China’s contemporary international relations, but these references serve more the purpose of conjuring up some cultural disposition without explicating the interpretive logic necessary to show the usefulness or validity of the suggested extrapolation. It is about as useful as invoking Manifest Destiny, the Monroe Doctrine, the idea of Fortress America, the analogy of American football, Alfred Thayer Mahan’s treatise on sea power, and even Thucydides’s history of the Peloponnesian War to illuminate current U.S. foreign policy.
Any country with a long history and a rich culture, including China, offers contested ideas and competing, even divergent, doctrines and schools of thought. Indeed, strategic thoughts often embody bimodal injunctions, such as to be cautious and audacious, confident and vigilant, uncompromising and flexible, optimistic about eventual victory and realistic about short-term set back (Bobrow 1965, 1969; Bobrow, Chan, and Kringen 1979). Chinese diplomatic discourse and military treatises feature both lofty Confucian rhetoric on the efficacy of moral suasion and hard-nosed, realpolitik recognition of military coercion (Feng 2007; Johnston 1995)— just as contemporary analyses of and pronouncements about U.S. policies often incorporate both liberal and realist themes and arguments. Such elements can coexist.”
― Steve Chan, Looking for Balance: China, the United States, and Power Balancing in East Asia

“Moreover, there is often a gap between one’s self-image (one that may even be shared by foreigners) and a more complicated record of history. China’s interstate history is replete with wars and military campaigns that belie the Confucian dogma stressing “soft power” based on ethical teachings and cultural appeal. Actual practice has often departed from ritualistic rhetoric and official orthodoxy. Notwithstanding arguments to the contrary, the Chinese have not always eschewed maritime initiatives, shunned commercial contact with foreigners, or insisted that the latter be treated unequally under the tributary system (e.g., Dreyer 2007; Fairbank 1968; Levathes 1994; Reid and Zheng 2009; Rossabi 1983). Nor has China always managed to maintain a hierarchical system within its borders or in East Asia. Its regional hegemony has not always been accompanied by peace; there have been numerous wars, especially when dynastic authority has declined and imperial rule weakened (e.g., Hui 2008; Wang 2009). Even China’s Great Wall, both as a physical and ideational construct, shows the considerable distance that can separate myth-making from historical reality (e.g., Waldron 1990). As these and earlier remarks suggest, I am generally skeptical about sweeping cultural, historical, and even psychological attributions, such as those suggesting ostensible Chinese nationalism, ethnocentrism, yearning for order, or proclivity for authoritarian rule (e.g., Pye 1968) as a basis for understanding contemporary Chinese foreign policy.”
― Steve Chan, Looking for Balance: China, the United States, and Power Balancing in East Asia

“America is this juggernaut of expectation.”
― George Lewis, Jr.

“The United States is regarded by people everywhere as a dream come true, a sort of world state in miniature. Here dwell the world's emigrants under one law, and the law is: Thou shalt not push thy neighbor around. By some curious divinity which in him lies, Man, in this experiment of mixed races and mixed creeds, has turned out more good than bad, more right than wrong, more kind than cruel, and more sinned against than sinning. This is the world's hope and its chance.”
― E.B. White, The Wild Flag: Editorials from the New Yorker on Federal World Government and Other Matters

“Dear America you worry me.
Our friendship (& that's all it ever was)
is shaky.

I don't trust you
or your Dreams
or your Destiny
any more.”
― Robert Peterson

“Now there's nowhere to go but America. There are worse places, I said. Perhaps, he said.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Strong and healthy, that's what these twins will be. They'll need to be. This country isn't for the weak or the fat.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“There is a We in this poem
To which everyone belongs.

As in We the People--
In order to form a more perfect Union--

And: We were objects of much curiosity
To the Indians--

And: The next we present before you
Are things very appalling--

And: We find we are living, suffering, loving,
Dying a story. We had not known otherwise--

We's a huckster, trickster, has pluck.
We will draw you in.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“Right now, fewer than one third of adults over age 50 have started saving for long-term care, one in three employed adults aged 55-64 has no savings for retirement, and another one third have less than one year's salary in savings. It used to be easier to save in a more stable market when more jobs were full-time with reliable benefit programs, when the cost of college wasn't so astronomical.”
― Ai-jen Poo, The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America

“America, you have left me on "Read" more times than I can count,
and yet I keep writing these texts to you, though you ghost

me on the regular. Buzzed, I go to bed, and buzzing with expectation
each morning I wake up ready to do the same thing all over again,

as though faith weren't something inherently crazy, given the state of things.
Lately, I've been making End Times jokes, except they're not really jokes anymore.”
― Natasha Oladokun

“As an immigrant his mission had been simple. He was brought here by his parents to make money off what an important Jewish author had once termed "the American berserk." You came, they laughed at your accent on an urban playground, and then you were given your degrees and guided into battle. By which point, you were just a scab sent in to reinforce the established order. In the video, as the white policeman was draining the air from his Black victim's lungs with his knee, another cop, a Hmong immigrant, stood in front of him in a wide-open stance, daring anyone to come to the dying man's aid. He could have been a Russian, a Korean, a Gujarati. All of us, Senderovsky thought, are in service to an order that has long predated us. All of us have come to feast on this land of bondage. And all of us are useful and expendable in turn.”
― Gary Shteyngart, Our Country Friends

“Governments continue to violate human rights daily. The United States of America has designated itself as the defender of these rights and has justified great wars in their name even as its human rights records have been abysmal.”
― Aysha Taryam

“The Christmas decorations at the entrance were garish, incomprehensible, partisan. What kind of a country did we live in?”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Hummingbird Salamander