"An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say "Gentlemen" to the person with whom he is conversing."

American, Chance, Meeting, Talk

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"An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say "Gentlemen" to the person with whom he is conversing."

Exlpore more American quotes

"Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are."

Gertrude Stein, American Author

American, Americans, Deals

"So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda."

John Steinbeck, American Author

American, Coffee, Pride

"Rap actually took root in the Negro community, and then in the Hispanic community, long before it impacted on the larger American community as a whole."

Archie Shepp, American Musician

American, Community, Rap

"I don't understand American football at all. It looks like all-in wrestling with crash helmets."

Sting, British Musician

American, Football, Wrestling

"I remember the Curia said, that's up to the American bishops, not up to Rome."

Hans Kung, Swiss Theologian

American, Rome

"The 1970s, the decade of my teenage years, was a transitional period in American youth culture."

Eric Allin Cornell, American Physicist

American, Culture, Teenage, Years

"The down side of Americans being obsessed with pop culture is that they kind of like it light."

Bill Griffith, American Cartoonist

American, Americans, Being, Culture, Light

"I have no doubts that it will be a major sport-in the United States. I'm probably not going to live to see that day because Americans are a little afraid of getting interested in something at which they're not very good."

Lamar Hunt, American Entertainer

American, Americans, Day, states, United

"Americans enjoy uniformity in a way that the British don't; they wanted everybody of a sort of nice chorus line height and here I was, this person who was a good three inches taller than anyone else on the end of the line."

Jeremy Irons, English Actor

American, Americans, End

"The only difference between the Bel Air of the '90s and the Bel Air of my childhood is that now the nannies are Latina instead of British, and the cars European instead of American."

Lorna Luft, American Actress

American, Childhood, Difference, Now

Explore more quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

"On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government."

Governance

"For benefits by their very greatness spotlight the difference in conditions and arouse a secret annoyance in those who profit from them. But the charm of simple good manners is almost irresistible."

Manners

"I have always thought that in revolutions, especially democratic revolutions, madmen, not those so called by courtesy, but genuine madmen, have played a very considerable political part. One thing is certain, and that is that a condition of semi-madness is not unbecoming at such times, and often even leads to success."

Revolution

"No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them; and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure."

Sociology

"Whether democracy or aristocracy is the better form of government constitutes a very difficult question. But, clearly, democracy inconveniences one person while aristocracy oppresses another. That is a truth which establishes itself and precludes any discussion: you are rich and I am poor."

Inequality

"It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights - the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle."

Dependency

"Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom."

Equality

"The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express."

Genius

"We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects."

Positive

"Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic."

Press