"Loneliness seems to have become the great American disease..."

In America, we have people who are too rich, people who are too poor, people who are hungry, people who are sick, people who are homeless, people who are imprisoned, people who are bored, people who are strung-out, people who are lonely, people who are exploited, people who lose and can't find their way, people who give up on life. America, we better live as sisters and brothers. Let us take care of our land. We cannot stand up for every other land. Stand up for ourselves.
Pearl Bailey, Hurry Up, America, and Spit, 1976

The President circles the globe seemingly handing out carte-blanche military commitment credit cards and scientists in Houston dissect dusty rocks in search of other life-forms while humans starve to death--physically, mentally and spiritually--at home and abroad.
Shirley Chisholm, speech, Church Women United, Massachusetts, August 21, 1969.

I would rather live in Russia on black bread and vodka than in the United States at the best hotels. America knows nothing of food, love, or art.
Isadora Duncan, interview, 1922

Who stole America?
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Starting from San Francisco, 1961

The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air-conditioned, power-steered and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground. They pass on into a countryside that has been rendered largely invisible by commercial art.... They picnic on exquisitely packaged food from a portable icebox by a polluted stream and go on to spend the night at a park which is a menace to public health and morals. Just before dozing off on an air mattress, beneath a nylon tent, amid the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect vaguely on the curious unevenness of their blessings. Is this, indeed, the American genius?
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, 1976

We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them.
Lillian Hellman, Scoundrel Time, 1976

I pray we are still a young and courageous nation, that we have not grown so old and so fat and so prosperous that all we can think about is to sit back with our arms around our money bags. If we choose to do that I have no doubt that the smoldering fires will burst into flame and consume us--dollars and all.
Lyndon B. Johnson, speech to Congress, May 7, 1947

I don't think it does any harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals.
Charles Kuralt, American Way, March, 1978

All social classes are divided down the middle by a line which, however classless we may think we are, maintains a state of social tension. On one side of the line are men; on the other, women.
Russell Lynes, A Surfeit of Honey, 1957

There's something missing in the sanitized life we lead. Something that our leaders in Washington can never supply by simple edict, something that the commercials on television never advertise because nobody's yet found a way to bottle it or box it or can it. What's missing is the touch, the warmth, the meaning of life. A four-color spread in Time is no substitute for it. Neither is a 30-second commercial or a reassuring Washington press conference.
Harvey Milk, speech, fund-raising meeting, 1977

****Special Thanx To NYPL Book of 20th Century Quotations. All Previous Quotes and More Can Be Found Here.****