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Insults and Insulting
Quotes about the USA
I
am willing to love all mankind, except an American
Samuel Johnson
America
is one long expectoration
Oscar Wilde
The
American has no language, he has a dialect, slang, provincialism, accent and
so forth
Rudyard Kipling
Of
course, America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always
been hushed up
Oscar Wilde
America
is the only nation in history which has gone miraculously gone directly from
barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation
Georges
Clemenceau
If there was ever an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptouwn on the Hudson called New York
O. Henry on New York
If your going to America, bring your own food
Fran Lebowitz
When
you become used to never being alone, you may consider yourself Americanised
Andre Maurois
No
one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public
HL Mencken
If
I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell
General PH Sherican
California
is a fine place to live. if you happen to be an orange
Fred Allen
Hollywood
is a sewer with service from the Ritz
William Mizner
It
was wonderful to find America, put perhaps it would have been more wonderful
to miss it
Mark Twain
All American
writing gives me the impression that Americans don't care for girls at all. What
the American male really wants is two things: he wants to be blown by a stranger
while reading a newspaper and he wants to be fucked by his buddy when he's drunk.
Everything else is society.
W. H.
Auden, British poet, in The Table-Talk of W. H. Auden, Alan Ansen, 1990
There is nothing
the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right;
it is the ideal American who is all wrong.
G. K. Chesterton,
British novelist, poet and critic
Their ... demeanour
is invariably morose, sullen, clownish and repulsive. I should think there is
not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute of humour, vivacity,
or the capacity of enjoyment.
Charles Dickens,
British novelist
The American
nation in the sixth ward is a fine people; they love the eagle — on the back of
a dollar.
Finlay Peter
Dunne, US humorist
No one can
be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand
studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute.
Paul Gallico,
US writer
Knavery seems
to be so much the striking feature of its inhabitants that it may not in the end
be an evil that they will become aliens to this country.
George III,
British monarch
The organisation
of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal,
an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by a mass media notoriously phoney.
Paul Goodman, US
writer, The Community of Scholars, 1962
Sir, they are
a race of convicts and ought to be grateful for anything we allow them short of
hanging.
Dr Samuel Johnson,
British critic, poet and lexicographer, quoted in James Boswell, Life of Samuel
Johnson, 1791
The American
has no language. He has dialect, slang, provincialism, accent and so forth.
Rudyard Kipling,
British writer and poet
If you're going
to America, bring your own food.
Fran Lebowitz, US writer, Social Studies, 1981
Americans are
people who laugh at African witch doctors and spend 100 million dollars on fake
reducing systems.
L. L. Levinson,
US writer
There won't
be any revolution in America ... the people are too clean. They spend all their
time changing their shirts and washing themselves. You can't feel fierce and revolutionary
in a bathroom.
Eric Linklater,
British writer, Juan in America, 1930
The trouble
with America is that there are far too many wide open spaces surrounded by teeth.
Charles Luckman,
US writer
Question: If
you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, why do you
live here?
Mencken: Why do men go to zoos?
H. L. Mencken,
US essayist, philologist and critic, Prejudices, 5th series, 1926
The American
political system is like fast food - mushy, insipid, made out of disgusting parts
of things and everybody wants some.
P. J. O'Rourke,
US writer, Parliament of Whores, 1991
The national
dish of America is menus.
Robert
Robinson, British television and radio personality
Frustrate a
Frenchman, he will drink himself to death; an Irishman, he will die of angry hypertension;
a Dane, he will shoot himself; an American, he will get drunk, shoot you, then
establish a million dollar aid programme for your relatives. Then he will die
of an ulcer.
S. A. Rudin,
Canadian psychologist
America ...
where laws and customs alike are based on the dreams of spinsters.
Bertrand Russell,
British philosopher, Marriage and Morals, 1929
In America
everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are
equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors.
Bertrand Russell,
Unpopular Essays, 1950
Here is the
difference between Dante, Milton and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the
place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.
Carl Sandburg,
US poet
The 100% American
is 99% idiot.
George Bernard
Shaw, Irish playwright and critic
The American
male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.
Wilfred Sheed,
US writer, Office Politics, 1967
In the four
corners of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play?
or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to America's
physicians and surgeons? ... Who drinks out of American glasses? or eats from
American plates? or wears American coats and gowns? or sleeps in American blankets?
Finally, under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth
man a slave, whom his fellow creatures may buy and sell and torture?
Sydney Smith,
British clergyman, essayist and wit
In America
any boy may become President, and I suppose that's just the risk he takes.
Adlai Stevenson,
US statesman, diplomat and lawyer, 1952
New York is
a city of 7,000,000 so decadent that when I leave it I never dare look back lest
I turn into salt and the conductor throw me over his left shoulder for good luck.
Frank Sullivan,
US writer
I found there
a country with thirty-two religions and only one sauce.
Charles-Maurice Talleyrand-Perigord, French statesman and diplomat
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,
US journalist, Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972
America is
a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail it knocks
over a chair.
Arnold Toynbee,
British historian
Speaking of
New York as a traveller I have two faults to find with it. In the first place
there is nothing to see; and in the second place there is no mode of getting about
to see anything.
Anthony Trollope,
British novelist
I heard an
Englishman, who had been long resident in America, declare that in following,
in meeting, or in overtaking, in the street, on the road, or in the field, at
the theatre, the coffee-house, or at home, he had never overheard Americans conversing
without the word DOLLAR being pronounced between them. Such unity of purpose ...
can ... be found nowhere else, except... in an ant's nest.
Frances Trollope,
British traveller and writer, A Commentary of Travels on a Mississippi Steamer,
1832
It is by the
goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things:
freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practise either
of them.
Mark Twain
The hatred
Americans have for their own government is pathological ... at one level it is
simply thwarted greed: since our religion is making a buck, giving a part of that
buck to any government is an act against nature.
Gore Vidal,
US writer
The Americans,
like the English, probably make love worse than any other race.
Walt
Whitman, US poet
It is absurd
to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America when they have
their mothers and their manners.
Oscar
Wilde, Irish author, playwright and wit
Of course,
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed
up.
Oscar
Wilde, Irish author, playwright and wit
In America
the President rules for four years and journalism governs for ever and ever.
Oscar
Wilde, Irish author, playwright and wit
When good Americans
die, they go to Paris; when bad Americans die, they go to America.
Oscar Wilde,
Irish author, playwright and wit
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