Jay Parini Quotes
American failures in Vietnam and Iraq suggest that it's not really possible to create and sustain a proxy government in a country far from our own borders.

Quotes to Explore
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I had no intention of becoming a performer, and yet under miraculous circumstances I was brought into the music industry fold. If divine powers hadn't intervened, I'd still be living in China working in some area of Sino-American comparative law.
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What's great about stand-up is that you can say whatever you want and go around the country, and sometimes the world, and work on it and see how people react. You don't need Standards & Practices or notes from lawyers or producers to tell you what's funny.
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Export anything to a friendly country except American management.
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And the American public was able to make up their own mind whether this verdict was a just verdict or not. So I think there's a lot of value in the public being able to see how the system works or doesn't work, so I think there's a definite value there.
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The adolescent protagonist is one of the hallmarks of American literature.
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In the United States we have the great Harvard Business School, but America is the country with the greatest debt in the world.
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The first 'D' is to dream: dream big - not for yourself, but for the country and for the world. The second 'D' is to discover: discover your full potential and the opportunities that surround you; and the third 'D' is to do. 'Do' means to act on your dreams and make best use of the opportunities you have discovered.
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The American Dream is that any man or woman, despite of his or her background, can change their circumstances and rise as high as they are willing to work.
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The United States was the first country in the history of the world to be consciously created out of an idea - and the idea was liberty.
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As a grandson of farmers in downstate Illinois, I have long admired the dedication of farmers to their work and have written about the role of agriculture in American innovation.
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Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
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Despite a certain amount of rhetoric, such as 'the second American Revolution,' there is a fair consensus about which events in the affairs of a people can rightly be called revolutions. It is also clear that such revolutions are proper objects of study for the historian.
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After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.
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My skin may have wrinkles but it's because I'm smiling so much. That might sound like some terrible American greetings card, but I feel it's immoral for me to castigate my body for getting older, when it does everything I ask of it.
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I was elected to the Senate in 2010 by people worried about our country, worried about our kids and their future.
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The more democratic and open a society is, the more it's exposed to terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police regime, the more it risks hijackings or massacres like the ones that took place for many years in Italy and Germany and other parts of Europe.
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In graduate school, Aubrey Berg at the Cincinnati Conservatory gave me the chance to perform with the best in the country in Broadway caliber productions.
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Most people know Muslims in their community but don't realize it.
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What kind of people do we wish to become, and how do we know an American when we see one? Is it possible to pursue a common purpose without a common history or a standard text?
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It does no 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.
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The experience of learning how to get straight to the core of a problem proved to be of immense value later when I had a long succession of responsibilities in large, complex government departments.
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While the Cold War had us questioning our next-door neighbors, big brands emerged to capture our trust. We became consumers.
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The next Bill Gates will not start an operating system. The next Larry Page won't start a search engine. The next Mark Zuckerberg won't start a social network company. If you are copying these people, you are not learning from them.
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American failures in Vietnam and Iraq suggest that it's not really possible to create and sustain a proxy government in a country far from our own borders.