Quotes by American/USA authors (page 12)

"Competition is a sin"

"I tell students that the opportunities I had were a result of having a good educational background. Education is what allows you to stand out"

Ellen Ochoa, Astronaut

"One must learn, if one is to see the beauty in Japan, to like an extraordinarily restrained and delicate loveliness"

Miriam Beard, Historian

"Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day"

Thornton Wilder, Writer

"There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures"

James Thurber, Comedian

"The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive"

Allen Ginsberg, Poet

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure"

Colin Powell, Statesman

"You can't drown yourself in drink. I've tried, you float"

John Barrymore, Actor

"Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another"

Madonna Ciccone, Entertainer

"Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship"

Margaret Mead, Scientist

"I buy when other people are selling"

J. Paul Getty, Businessman

"The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions"

Susan Sontag, Author

"I swear, if you existed I'd divorce you"

Edward Albee, Dramatist

"I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil"

Truman Capote, Novelist

"Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt"

Eric Sevareid, Journalist

"As a boy, I believed freedom for America meant freedom for me. There was a time I believed every word spoken"

Barry White, Musician

"I got into underground comics fairly early on and kind of wandered away from the superhero stuff, but I was an art student and I was drawing a lot as a kid"

Jonathan Lethem, Writer

"The game isn't over till the clock says zero"

Paul Pierce, Athlete

"I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there"

Charles Bukowski, Poet

"Strong I am one of those who never knows the direction of my journey until I have almost arrived"

Anna Louise Strong, Journalist

"States get to improve transportation infrastructure; that creates economic development, puts people back to work and, most important, enhances safety and improves local communities"

Corrine Brown, Politician

"Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those 94 percent"

Stokely Carmichael, Activist

"We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society"

Hillary Clinton, Politician

"If you're tired of starting over, stop giving up"

Shia LaBeouf, Actor

"I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories"

Ray Bradbury, Writer

"Questions are a burden to others; answers are a prison for oneself"

Patrick McGoohan, Actor

"Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony"

Lou Reed, Musician

"The printed page conveys information and commitment, and requires active involvement. Television conveys emotion and experience, and it's very limited in what it can do logically. It's an existential experience - there and then gone"

Bill Moyers, Journalist

"In America there are two classes of travel - first class, and with children"

Robert Benchley, Comedian

"Americans rightly asked, if this is the way our government responds to a natural disaster it knew about days in advance, how would it respond to a surprise terrorist attack? How would it respond to an earthquake?"

Russ Carnahan, Politician

"I am not immortal. Faustus and I are the also-ran"

Anne Sexton, Poet

"No, I don't belong to a retirement community"

Sally Kellerman, Actress

"Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust"

Jesse Owens, Athlete

"Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change"

Stephen Covey, Businessman