American Quote by Terry Eagleton

America is a country in which I see the most persistant idealism and the blandest of cynicism and the race is on between its…

— Alistair Cooke

“I have a tremendous fascination with the United States of America, the grand, swirling variousness of it, the way it siphons off the ambitious,…

— Roland Merullo

“Generic cynicism makes us feel hip and alternative even as we slip along with our fellow citizens into a morass of indifference.”

— Timothy Snyder

It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.

— Anonymous

The enemy of idealism is zealotry.

— Neil Kinnock

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society, for nothing suffocates the promise of America more than unbounded cynicism and indifference.

— Joe Biden

It is cynicism, and not idealism, that is generally the mark of youthful immaturity, or rather it is the cynic who is generally the…

— Andrew Sarris

“In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice,…

— W.H. Auden

Patriotism is the passion of fools and the most foolish of passions.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

True Americanism is practical idealism. Its aims, instead of being materialistic and mechanical, are idealistic to the point of being Utopian. In this way,…

— Maurice Saatchi

Cynicism has all the smart words on it's side; idealism uses a nursery school dictionary.

— Michael Arditti

Americans have been remarkably devoted to the capacity for belief, to idealism. That's why we get into trouble all the time. We're always viewed…

— A. Bartlett Giamatti