Famous quotes containing the words north american, north, american and/or people:
“The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or mature.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“The English were very backward to explore and settle the continent which they had stumbled upon. The French preceded them both in their attempts to colonize the continent of North America ... and in their first permanent settlement ... And the right of possession, naturally enough, was the one which England mainly respected and recognized in the case of Spain, of Portugal, and also of France, from the time of Henry VII.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“Slavery can only be abolished by raising the character of the people who compose the nation; and that can be done only by showing them a higher one.”
—Maria Weston Chapman (1806–1885)