To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.
More Quotes from Mary McCarthy:
You musn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.Mary McCarthy
The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.
Mary McCarthy
The strongest argument for the unmaterialistic character of American life is ... that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable ... the food we eat, the cramped apartments ... the crowded subways.... American life, in large cities, at any rate, is a perpetual assault of the senses and the nerves it is out of asceticism, out of unworldliness, precisely, that we bear it.
Mary McCarthy
We are the hero of our own story.
Mary McCarthy
The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner's visit to Congress -- these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage, these persons are a reflection on the democratic process rather than of it they expose it in its process rather than of it they expose it in its underwear.
Mary McCarthy
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: America Quotes, Birth Quotes, Children Quotes, Happiness Quotes, Past Quotes, Reality Quotes, Speaking Quotes, Vice & Virtue Quotes, World QuotesBased on Keywords: civics, nonconformity, straining
Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can and surely will at times fail. Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love, can be terrifying, too. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk.
Joyce Brothers
A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas.
Charles Dudley Warner
You cannot get ahead while you are getting even.
Dick Armey