Calvin Trillin Quotes

A lot of my work reflects the incredible influence that America has had on contemporary African culture. Some of it's insidious, some of it's innocuous, some of it's invisible. It's there.

the Americanizing tasks of the public schools have passed into other hands, in part because the overwhelming majority of Americans are native-born and do not need to be 'Americanized.' As well, recent multicultural understandings of what is 'American' no longer enables the possibility of the homogenized Americanization of the past. The rise of the mass media (TV, radio, movies) has provided a set of far more powerful socialization and acculturation tools which 'Americanize' in their own way in a manner that has far greater influence than the public school and which is not only accessible to everyone but sought by everyone.

There are very few African Americans who have had as much impact on American society as Bill Cosby.

Modernization means Westernization.

We are being swallowed up by the popular culture of the United States, but then the Americans are being swallowed up by it too. It's just as much a threat to American culture as it is to ours.

Liberal dominance of important areas of America's social and political life has undermined many of the virtues that have sustained this country.

California ... is the place that sets the trends and establishes the values for the rest of the country; like a slow ooze, California culture spreads eastward across the land.

A writer once said to me, If you ever go to America, go either to the East Coast or the West Coast: The rest is a desert full of bigots. That's what I think I'd like . . . a version of pastoral.

The opponents of this process have always tried to vilify westernization as a poor imitation.

One thing that is not to be underestimated is American culture's influence on the rest of the world.

In Canada you grow up - we're next to the United States. We're watching whatever you're watching. We're following your news. It's obvious that we are inundated with American cultural information and political information. Whereas the opposite is not true.

Scientists are very much entangled in their culture and this culture is not pristine, untouched by other cultures and practices.

I turned a lot of people in white America - and not just white America, but middle-class America - into hip-hoppers, you know?

I will never be able to break the hold that America has on me.

When you start exporting ideas, philosophy, behavior, products, ways of living, it becomes an assault on the culture. Americans have to understand that.

The West is the most American part of America....

Russians would make charming visitors at New-Yorke, and civilize that part of America wonderfully.

If there is cultural imperialism, it is definitely American.

That's one thing about Americans: They know how to have fun.

Whether they're for good or bad, all trends in the United States start in California.

Seriously, American pop culture must be the most predominant force on the planet, next to pollution and poverty.

America has a genius for the encouragement of fame.

Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care.

It all looks American because America, the country that invented mass capitalism and consumerism, got there first. the impact of mass capitalism is now universal.

Everything about the behaviour of American society reveals that it's half Judaized, and the other half negrified.