"I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro. This is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future."
Susan Sontag
Delivered: September 12, 2020
"No one ever comes up to me and says, 'Hey man, I loved your work in 'Road Trip.' They say, 'Are you that guy?' Like, they have no idea. 'Were you in 'American Pie 2?'"
Paulo Costanzo
Delivered: September 27, 2020
"I have an interest in Native American artifacts, mainly Plains Indians from the 1840s to the 1900s, and I go in and out of that. I get really into it, and then I put it down, but it's surrounding me."
Timothy B. Schmit
Delivered: October 1, 2020
"Panama's a really wonderful country. There's obviously the Panama Canal, which brings a lot of tourism, and a huge American influence; it's just a mix of so many great things: African, Caribbean, Latin American Spanish, all kinds of influences there."
J. August Richards
Delivered: September 9, 2020
"Two hundred million Americans, and there ain't two good catchers among 'em."
Casey Stengel
Delivered: September 6, 2020
"The Declaration of Independence was always our vision of who we wanted to be, our ideal of freedom and justice, how we were going to be different, and what the American experiment was going to be about."
Marian Wright Edelman
Delivered: September 4, 2020
"There's a certain je ne sais quoi that Americans have in spades - a we-can-do-anything spirit that makes so many things possible for all of us. We're rugged individualists, aspirational in nature, and we like to think for ourselves."
Marianne Williamson
Delivered: September 8, 2020
"I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas."
Jean-Luc Godard
Delivered: September 21, 2020
"Americans have so far put up with inequality because they felt they could change their status. They didn't mind others being rich, as long as they had a path to move up as well. The American Dream is all about social mobility in a sense - the idea that anyone can make it."
Fareed Zakaria
Delivered: September 10, 2020
"The American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment - in deterrence, and perhaps most of all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible crimes - outweighs the risk of error."
Antonin Scalia
Delivered: September 15, 2020
"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."
Stephen Hawking
Delivered: September 16, 2020
"Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax."
Mike Royko
Delivered: September 14, 2020
"Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went."
John Updike
Delivered: September 17, 2020
"One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That's the American ideal. Poor people don't like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank they don't like to think of themselves as poor."
Jay-Z
Delivered: September 22, 2020
"Whether we are working to pay off student loans, credit card debt, paying for elder or childcare, or even trying to save for retirement, the idea of the American dream still remains just that - a dream."
Adrienne C. Moore
Delivered: September 11, 2020
"There's not a single doubt in my mind that the whole of Chrysler organization views itself as an American car producer."
Sergio Marchionne
Delivered: September 28, 2020
"All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them."
Muhammad Ali
Delivered: September 3, 2020
"For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society?"
Tim Matheson
Delivered: September 5, 2020
"The 'American Idol' and 'X Factor' shows, they're great shows. But I think I need to make a show like that, directed straight to the hood, to the artists that don't get the attention, that don't have the money to make themselves representable."
Snoop Dogg
Delivered: September 13, 2020
"One of the great problems with Americans is that - being a decent people - they assume that everyone else is equally decent."
Meir Kahane
Delivered: September 26, 2020
"My childhood, adolescence and high school days are unusually important. If there has ever been a time that I developed a uniqueness and sense of humor and the ability to organize, it was then. In those early days, I developed the skills that gave me a certain degree of success in American politics."
Lee Atwater
Delivered: September 18, 2020
"They said you'd really have to be something to be like Babe Ruth. But Babe Ruth was an American player. What we needed was a Puerto Rican player they could say that about, someone to look up to and try to equal."
Roberto Clemente
Delivered: September 29, 2020
"What the American people want to do is fight a war without getting hurt. You can't do that any more than you can get into a barroom fight without getting hurt... Unless the American people are willing to send their sons out to fight an aggressor, there just isn't going to be any United States."
Chesty Puller
Delivered: September 2, 2020
"Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art."
Langston Hughes
Delivered: September 19, 2020
"Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national, and political boundaries. You don't have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science."
Sam Harris
Delivered: September 25, 2020
"I'm a Canadian. Outside Canada I carry the flag. Canadian nationalism isn't as insidious as American nationalism, though. It's good natured. It's all about maple syrup, not war."
Feist
Delivered: September 7, 2020
"The Lord has done what I wanted Him to do this week. I wanted, primarily, peace about going into pioneer Indian work. And as I analyze my feelings now, I feel quite at ease about saying that tribal work in South American jungles is the general direction of my missionary purpose."
Jim Elliot
Delivered: September 23, 2020
"France, and the whole of Europe have a great culture and an amazing history. Most important thing though is that people there know how to live! In America they've forgotten all about it. I'm afraid that the American culture is a disaster."
Johnny Depp
Delivered: September 20, 2020
"When I first heard Kraftwerk, I thought they were an American band singing in German."
Jean-Michel Jarre
Delivered: September 24, 2020
"Personally, I can't see the appeal in trekking down to D.C. for a networking extravaganza, even if it is built around a special moment in American history. While I find the election of Barack Obama inspirational, I don't have a desire to memorialize it with overly effusive celebration."
Jamie Johnson
Delivered: September 30, 2020