It was in 1931 that the historian James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “the American dream.” The American dream is not just a yearning for affluence, Adams said, but also for the chance to overcome barriers and social class, to become the best t...
Looking back, I got the bed I wanted and I lay in it. I didn't want to go to America. If you want to join that world, you have to go and live there, and that was something I could not have done. I am very much about family. It doesn't matter where I ...
Unlike the Contract with America, which was created by Washington pollsters and insiders, Families First was developed from the grassroots up. Congressional Democrats from across the country spent months meeting with people back home, asking them wha...
When I grew up, in Taiwan, the Korean War was seen as a good war, where America protected Asia. It was sort of an extension of World War II. And it was, of course, the peak of the Cold War. People in Taiwan were generally proAmerican. The Korean War ...
We've also seen another future we could choose. First of all, we'd have the right to choose. It's an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance; in which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer ...
Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever...
You know what these “God Bless America” people oughta do? They oughta check with that Jesus fellow they’re so crazy about. They’re always talking about “What would Jesus do?” They don’t wanna know so they can do it – they just wanna k...
Like all of Latin America, Mexico after independence in 1821 turned its back on a triple heritage: on the Spanish heritage, because we were newly liberated colonies, and on our Indian and black heritages, because we considered them backward and barba...
If life is music, I sometimes feel as though I was born on the off-beat of the song, and I love it. As Christian numbers reportedly decrease in America, my love for Christ feels as though it increases. I must be honest about such strange feelings: I ...
I had no idea that "letting go" would be so complicated; that it would sometimes feel liberating and other times more sorrowful and lonely. In the long run, most of it was like standing on the shore, watching your family set sail for America, and the...
The American people elected us here to cut spending so we can create an environment for jobs in America. The House has acted. We have demonstrated that we want to see spending, discretionary spending, brought down to levels of 2008. We've seen no cou...
Now, as a nation, we don't promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That's an essential promise of ...
We can go back to economic plans that are only designed to benefit the wealthiest among us, like Mitt Romney. Or we can keep moving forward with President Obama's vision for a growing economy that works for middle-class families in North Carolina and...
I feel that I had been rescued from the gutter by America. One day I was under the gutter, chased by police, thinking dogs were going to get me. I laid there listening to the dogs and the gutter. The next day, there I am standing on the Olympic platf...
We have to have a conversation about whether Obama's plan to increase spending to occupy Afghanistan helps make America a safer country, or not. I think at some point, we may decide that we don't have to have that size military and cost footprint in ...
Most people in America want an easy read. I call it McFiction - books which pass right through you without you even digesting them. I don't mean a book that has two-syllable words. I mean chapters you can read in a toilet break. Happy endings. We are...
Yes, the long war on Christianity. I pray that one day we may live in an America where Christians can worship freely! In broad daylight! Openly wearing the symbols of their religion... perhaps around their necks? And maybe -- dare I dream it? -- mayb...
Every year, about 10 billion farm animals go through America's horrific factory farm system: cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, lamb. There, they are subjected to unimaginable and torturous confinement in vast factories where they never see the light of da...
Wanda: What are you thinking, Archie? Archie: I'm just trying to think of one good reason why I should take you to South America with me. Wanda: How about... because I have the key to the safety deposit box? [pause] Archie: That's a... Wanda, Archie...
Young Patsy: Hey, stop by for you later! Young Noodles: Yeah, but knock here on the john first! My old man's praying, and my old lady's crying, and the light's turned off. What the hell should I go home for? At least in here I can read...
[Prohibition is repealed] Noodles: Hey, Maxie. Max! How much money we got put away? Max: Why? Noodles: Because we're unemployed. Max: About a million bucks. Carol: Oh, yeah? Where'd you put it? Max: In my underwear. Carol: I'd have found it there...
