Richard Betts:

The sacred concepts of freedom, individualism, and cooperation are so ingrained in U.S. political culture that most people assume them to be the natural order of things, universal values that people everywhere would embrace if given the chance.

Decius:

This is the fevered dream of theocracy. This is America.

Lydia Sweetland:

This is not the American dream. This is not my American dream.

Mark Whitehouse:

Giving up on the American dream has its benefits.

Betts:

In times of change, people wonder more consciously about how the world works.

Roger D. Hodge:

The world is construed out of blood and nothing else but blood. Death is the condition of existence and life is but an emanation thereof. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood. Before man was, war waited for him. The idea that man can be understood is an illusion. All horses possess one soul. What the wolf knows man cannot know.

Vannevar Bush:

Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems.

Jon Lee Anderson:

The air stinks heavily of raw sewage, but no one seems to notice.

Bill Bryson:

It has been calculated that if your pillow is six years old (which is the average age for a pillow), one-tenth of its weight will be made up of sloughed skin, living and dead mites, and mite dung.

Virginia Postrel:

In 2008, Americans owned an average of 92 items of clothing, not counting underwear, bras and pajamas.

By contrast, consider a middle-class worker's wardrobe during the Great Depression. Instead of roughly 90 items, it contained fewer than 15.

An exchange:

Researcher: How long have you had trouble remembering things?

Patient: That I don't know myself. I can't tell you because I don't remember.

Rebecca Brock:

You can't even remember what I'm trying to forget.