M. H. Abrams Quotes

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

Central to America's rise to global leadership is our Judeo-Christian tradition with the vision of the goodness and possibilities of every human life.

In Latin America, even atheists are Catholics.

Nothing in Christianity is original.

When we look at the settling of America we see a Bible in hand and God. Every Thanksgiving has God and the peacefulness of gratitude. It was important when the Twin Towers were hit and the sorrow with them that the first thing Congress did was sing "God Bless America."

In Germany representatives of the Islamic communities try to hijack children who are born here, along with the entire Islamic community, to prevent them from being influenced by the society which has taken them in. Children born here are like blank sheets on which you can write European or Islamic texts. Muslim representatives want to raise their children as if they don't even live in Europe.

A whole generation of writers dined out on the dialectic between original cultures and their culture by "progress.

A lot of native culture has been destroyed. So you already feel lost inside your culture. And then you add up feeling lost and insignificant inside the larger culture. So you end up feeling lost squared. And to never be recognized, to never have any power, you know, other minority communities actually have a lot of economic, cultural power.

The old Irish when immersing a babe at baptism left out the right arm so that it would remain pagan for good fighting

We can be reluctant to recognize how much of our culture was literary, particularly now that so many of the institutional purveyors of literature happily have joined in proclaiming its death. A substantial number of Americans who believe they worship God actually worship three major literary characters: the Yahweh of the J Writer (earliest author of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers), the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark, and Allah of the Koran.

Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

Maybe our grandmothers weren't as stupid as we thought. The family, volunteer work, religion, shaping the hearts and minds of the next generation-maybe all that can't be reduced to just 'shining floors and wiping noses.'

Nations which don't find their national identities will be preyed upon by other nations.

A black Christian is like a black person with no memory.

As a Latin man, obviously immigration has been a part of my culture for decades. [I] grew up understanding what you go through in order to come to this country and searching for that American dream.

In those fifty, the Old Man made me take religion seriously. I'd never been religious, but he told us that religion is important whether or not we believed in one, the same way that historical events are important whether or not you personally lived through them.

We are the damaged heirs of a damaged cultural style which has been practiced now for about seven thousand years.

He rolled his eyes. "First, my Dad's Korean and my mom was Swedish. Second, I totally suck at math. I don't like cuckoo clocks or skiing or fancy chocolate either." I sputtered a laugh. "I think that's Swiss.

It seems to be typical of life in America ... that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.

Judeo-Christian revelation is not the negative influence secularists proclaim it to be. Rather, it is the taproot of our civilization.

It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight.

Noah was this sort of patron saint in my life. When I finished Pi and I started to think about what was next, I was like, "Wow, it's interesting that no one has done a film of one of the greatest stories ever told." Even if you're not a Jew, a Muslim, or a Christian, you likely have a flood story in your culture.

I never would like to be a country that is that multicultural that, for instance, the Islamic values become more dominant. We should not do that. We should stop that.

If the American Negro is to have a culture of his own he will have to leave America to get it.

I'm interested in people who become culturally fluent. And when I meet young people I'm often amazed they don't quite seem to have a sense of where they're from. They're like the citizens of the airport.