Esmeralda: What is your name? Butch: Butch. Esmeralda: What does it mean? Butch: I'm American, honey. Our names don't mean shit.
Chef: [singing] Everything worked out/What a happy end/Canadians and Americans are friends again.
Well, no American wants to in any way hurt our capabilities to national defense, but that doesn't mean an unlimited amount of money, and a blank check for anything they want at any time, for any purpose. Not at all.
The American people have a right to know on the rare occasions in which their money is used to invest in private operations, if you will, take bets on capitalism, that is very well vetted, very well thought out and without political interference.
America's work ethic is non-stop; it's not even enshrined in law that workers have to get their two weeks holiday money. But Americans work harder than everyone else I can think of.
The only problem I have with American money is that it's all kind of the same color, so I'm always having to look. Whereas with Australian money, you have purple, blue, yellow... We keep it nice and simple.
And the Russians certainly don't have it. If a woman shows up in a fur coat, I just assume she's a crook. And that's me, the nice American. The assumption that you can't make money honestly is a killer.
Americans are immensely popular in Paris; and this is not due solely to the fact that they spend lots of money there, for they spend just as much or more in London, and in the latter city they are merely tolerated because they do spend.
A deep cynicism is taking hold of the country, with more and more Americans convinced that big money calls the shots in Washington and that there is nothing that can be done about it. We must resist that conclusion and fight back on behalf of everyda...
If we think we have ours and don't owe any time or money or effort to help those left behind, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the fraying social fabric that threatens all Americans.
My sentiments for the American cause, from the Stamp Act downward, have never changed... I am still of opinion that it is the cause of liberty and of human nature.
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.
The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution.
The Founders who crafted our Constitution and Bill of Rights were careful to draft a Constitution of limited powers - one that would protect Americans' liberty at all times - both in war, and in peace.
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans - born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.
There has been so much power concentrated. There is no leash on that power anymore and Americans face the situation that this power is getting momentum with each passing year with each presidency.
Individual investors have become far more powerful than anyone gives them credit for. Today, 85 million Americans invest in stocks. Collectively, that kind of buying and selling power can move markets.
The United States armed forces and coalition troops deserve recognition and support for their work to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and ensure the safety and security of the American people, civilians abroad, and the people of Iraq.
American power confers benefits on most inhabitants of the planet, even on many who dislike it and some who actively oppose it, because the United States plays a major, constructive, and historically unprecedented role in the world.
What are the symbols of American strength, wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll, not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It's their skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology.
I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.
