Scientific research and other studies have demonstrated that arts education can enhance American students' math and language skills and improve test scores which in turn increase chances of higher education and good jobs in the future.
Why did mainstream America come to accept marriage equality? Gay leaders had made a convincing case that gay families were like straight families and should have the same rights. The American spirit of fair play had been invoked.
Most Americans are fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I'm advocating a balanced budget. But along with that, look, there should be gay marriage equality. A woman should have the right to choose. Let's not build a fence across the border.
America, 5 years after this brutal attack, is testament that a Nation conceived in liberty and equality will endure. It is a triumph of millions of Americans but it is also the triumph of an idea larger than any one person, larger than any one nation...
We're trying to infuse a little good into the American culture. Love God, love your neighbor, hunt ducks. Raise your kids, make them behave, love them. I don't see the down side to that.
But we know that the very God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time. And sometimes we're called upon to defend both life and liberty - God's blessings to Americans, and indeed, to all of His creation.
When I got out of acting school, I was lucky to have gotten any job at all. A lot of people hiring African American actresses - it was right after 'Roots,' and for society, not me, it was great. Nice richly dark-skinned people was the fashion, and I ...
I'm sure I can make a movie that doesn't feel like a seventies movie! But the truth is, that's my favorite era in American filmmaking. To me, those were the great years.
President Obama is one of the great political knife-fighters in modern history. He is a failed president - his economy is bleak, his foreign policy bleaker, his vision for American even bleaker still. But he wins.
The richness of America is that we are diverse. We're not Sweden. We're not Norway. We are a great American experiment. And as soon as we start trying to forget race or turn our back on race, number one, we don't confront the real racial realities th...
At the end of the day, it is about the album and book and also about setting the record straight, because 'American Idol' has done a great job of defaming my name and throwing a lot of mud at me for the past two years. So that set up a lot of roadblo...
Americans are very enthusiastic. We have a new generation of moviegoers who love great horror films. I am a very imaginative man, and for me, it's easy to speak with my dark side. I have very beautiful, interesting nightmares.
I know a lot of writers who would much rather be writing the Great American Novel, but they've got bills to pay and alimony, and so they take a job at a less-than-reputable paper. You know, you do what you gotta do.
Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. For my own people, it was important to imagine him as the Great Emancipator, the Moses w...
The great thing about American women is their energy and the way they love to dress. French women don't really dress; they are too conservative, as it's always a question of money. In America, women are powerful and strong, determined. If they want t...
Chicago is the Great American City, and it was really great to live there during a time of economic expansion and opportunity and growth. I felt like I was living at the center of the world. Unlike New York, no one expects you to be a professional wr...
Those who have heard me speak from time to time know that quite often I cite the observation of that great American author, Mark Twain, who said, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across t...
However great his outward conformity, the immigrant is not Americanized unless his interests and affections have become deeply rooted here. And we properly demand of the immigrant even more than this. He must be brought into complete harmony with our...
The typical Western is kind of a good-guy/bad-guy thing, and that's great, but initially when I heard about 'Into the West,' and what I love about it is it delves into both sides of our cultural past, and it puts more of a human face on the Native Am...
When I was young, I kept trying to read 'Moby-Dick', and I couldn't get that far into it. And I kept thinking, 'Well, man, if I can't read the great American novel, I could never be a writer.' And this bothered me a great deal.
