Gene Kelly Quotes

I've travelled a lot, but I am essentially American. All my input has been American.

Elvis [Presley] had a stepstool, if you will, to success because he came from the dominant culture. They identified with him. Michael Jackson had to come further and go deeper into the pit of possibility of American democracy and of cultural expression.

I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit new African surroundings.

I suppose that was my first bit of acting, the acquisition of an English accent. It was really just an attempt to be understood.

I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.

When you become an American, they give you an injection so your accent changes.

The making of an American begins at that point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

It is often not even wise to try to make an American of the best of aliens.

There is this myth, that America is a melting pot, but what happens in assimilation is that we end up deliberately choosing the American things - hot dogs and apple pie - and ignoring the Chinese offerings.

What I am doing is creating a language. A different American language.

My grandparents bowed to the Americans and sought to learn from them. My parents sought to be them.

Culture is not a matter of a change of climate.

I received a letter just before I left office from a man. I don't know why he chose to write it, but I'm glad he did. He wrote that you can go to live in France, but you can't become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can't become a German, an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American.

ETHNOMAGNETISM: The tendency of young people to live in emotionally demonstrative, more unrestrained ethnic neighborhoods: 'You wouldn't understand it there, mother - they hug where I live now.'

People came to America and they did not abandon their own cultures, but they assumed new ones, a new one, an American culture rooted in liberty and freedom that they had never enjoyed in their lives prior. They didn't have to sacrifice who they were. They didn't have to change or give it up, but they were eager to become Americans.

One of the defining characteristics or difference between today's illegal immigration and the immigration of old is the immigrants of the late 1800s through the early 1920s came here desiring to become Americans. They wanted to become part of what was a unique and distinct American culture. They were all coming from tyranny of one kind or another.

..Acts of appropriation are part of the process by which we make ourselves. Appropriating - taking something for one’s own use - need not be synonymous with exploitation. This is especially true of cultural appropriation. The “use” one makes of what is appropriated is the crucial factor.

To me it's very obvious there are huge cultural differences between Americans and Canadians. But a lot of what we are is American.

The Spirit of Place [does not] exert its full influence upon a newcomer until the old inhabitant is dead or absorbed. So America.... The moment the last nuclei of Red [Indian] life break up in America, then the white men will have to reckon with the full force of the demon of the continent.

When people see one of these new forms of art for the first time, often they can't make sense of it. Then, if it's around long enough, a lot of people get used to it and it becomes assimilated into culture. So there's a morphic field both for the kind of art and for the appreciation of it.

If I were an immigrant Latino not born in the US, I could not have written Searching for Whitopia: An Improbably Journey to the Heart of America book. And that is because many of the Whitopians would not have been comfortable talking about their views on immigration, talking about their views on taxes. And they wouldn't have spilled to me the new script on race and poverty as they did.

People from all over the world came to America and assimilated into a single culture rooted in the founding, which is rooted in individual liberty and primacy of citizen over government. Everybody who came here, that's what drew them.

I didn't flee a dictator or swim an ocean to be an American like some do. I just thought long and hard about it.

The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.

I have always been in favor of a healthy Americanization, but that does not mean a complete disavowal of our German heritage. It means that our character should take on the best of that which is American, and combine it with the best of that which is German. By doing this, we can best serve the American people and their civilization.