#erica

The following twenty years would be the nadir of American Indian history, as the total Indian population between 1890 and 1910 fell to fewer than 250,000. (It was not until 1917 that Indian births exceeded deaths for the first time in fifty years.) ↗

— Kenneth C. Davis

#death #truth #death

The most important American addition to the World Experience was the simple surprising fact of America. We have helped prepare mankind for all its later surprises. ↗

— Daniel J. Boorstin

#america #american #experience #fact #helped

That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it. ↗

— George Carlin

#dream #funny #humor #wealth #dreams

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#dreams

Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether. ↗

— Hunter S. Thompson

#fear-and-loathing-in-las-vegas #dreams

Nite Owl II: But the country's disintegrating. What's happened to America? What's happened to the American dream? The Comedian: It came true. You're lookin' at it. ↗

— Alan Moore

#freedom #inspirational #watchmen #dreams

I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard you would become rich. The meaning of that was if you were poor it was because you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew this was a lite, about my father and millions of others, men and women who worked harder than anyone, harder than financiers and politicians, harder than anybody if you accept that when you work at an unpleasant job that makes it very hard work indeed. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#falsity-of-the-american-dream #hard-work #indignation-of-the-poor #lies #victim-blaming

All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream. ↗

— T.K. Whipple

#wilderness #dreams

Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#god #religion #business

...all these things were part of the business of dreams. He had learned not to laugh at the advertisements offering to teach writing, cartooning, engineering, to add inches to the biceps and to develop the bust ↗

— Nathanael West

#capitalism #commercialization #conformity #disillusionment #self-perception