American Obituary
When I heard Art Buchwald had died, I searched through my feeds for any references. There was only one… found in a list of quotes about America posted by Guy Kawasaki. I found them all fascinating:
- America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization. Georges Clemenceau
- America…just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. Hunter S. Thompson
- We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners. P.J. O’Rourke
- In modern America, anyone who attempts to write satirically about the events of the day finds it difficult to concoct a situation so bizarre that it may not actually come to pass while the article is still on the presses. Calvin Trillin
- My country, ‘tis of thee
Sweet land of felony
Of thee I sing
Land where my father fried
Young witches and applied
Whips to the Quaker’s hide
And made him spring.Ambrose Bierce
- In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact. Marlene Dietrich
- Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles. Paul Fussell
- The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing. Gamal Abdel Nasser
- The Americans are certainly great hero-worshipers, and always take their heroes from the criminal classes. Oscar Wilde
- Americans are broad-minded people. They’ll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn’t drive there’s something wrong with him. Art Buchwald
- Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it’s in Hamburger Technology. Clive James
- Food, one assumes, provides nourishment, but Americans eat fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction. John Cage
- Eternal boyhood is the dream of a depressing percentage of American males, and the locker room is the temple where they worship arrested development. Russell Baker
- When good Americans die they go to Paris; when bad Americans die they go to America. Oscar Wilde
