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...
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[Prohibition is repealed] Noodles: Hey, Maxie.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...
[changing his baby son's diaper] Police Chief Aiello: Hey, hey, let Papa change you. Come on, everything will be swell. Come on, come on, come on... [removes the diaper] Police Chief Aiello: What the fuck is this? What is this? Huh? What's that? LOOK...
[In 1931, Max greets Noodles, who has just gotten out after 10 years in prison] Max: Can I take that for you, sir? Your limousine is waiting. [takes Noodles' bag] Noodles: Maxie... Max: You're looking good. Noodles: You're looking a little better.
[In 1968, Noodles notices a picture] Noodles: What is this? Carol: Opening night. Fifteen years ago. Noodles: [pointing at a familiar person in the picture] Who's this? Carol: Patron saint of the place. Some actress. Noodles: Do you know her? Carol: ...
Red: There must be a con like me in every prison in America. I'm the guy who can get if for you; cigarettes, a bag of reefer, if that's your thing, a bottle of brandy to celebrate your kid's high school graduation, damn near anything within reason. Y...
The diversity of America is a strength of the country, and I don't think that we use that. We don't talk about our strengths. I mean, having so many diverse people in this country from all aspects of all over the world, and we don't use that. I think...
I am convinced that, despite what you think of Obama, I don't think Obama has a person-to-person connection with people. I think people love him because of his race and feel sorry for him, object of sympathy. I think people feel he's a victim, he por...
[first lines] Christy: [voiceover] There's some things you should wish for and some things you shouldn't. That's what my little brother Frankie told me. He told me I only had three wishes, and I looked into his eyes, and I don't know why I believed h...
[eleventh title card] Title Card: In late August, America's elite soldiers, Delta Force, Army Rangers and the 160th SOAR are sent to Mogadishu to remove Aidid and restore order. [twelfth title card] Title Card: The mission was to take three weeks, bu...
In contrast to England, half of whose literature seems to revolve around houses and estates, houses and estates being ready extensions of character, America has always found more value in the act of leaving one house for something larger and ostensib...
When I was 18, I went to the Soviet Union. I kept hearing that America was planning to bomb them - lots of bombs were going to come down on these people. I went there not knowing anything, except that I thought the whole thing was stupid and that I w...
So in this Hemisphere when the moon goes down, I sit in one of those all-night-into-mornings cafes, watching short short skies below the skyscrapers and low-rises and sense the big turntables turning and the roadies setting up from stadium to stadium...
At the stroke of midnight in Washington, a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and a head of a giant hyena crawls out of its bedroom window in the South Wing of the White House and leaps fifty feet down to the lawn...pauses briefly to stra...
