The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax

The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind

By the age of six the average child will have completed the basic American education.... From television, the child will have learned how to pick a lock, commit a fairly elaborate bank holdup, prevent wetness all day long, get the laundry twice as white, and kill people with a variety of sophisticated armaments.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

American grammar doesn't have the sturdiness of British grammar (a British advertising man with a proper education can make magazine copy for ribbed condoms sound like the Magna goddam Carta), but it has its own scruffy charm

The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other