American Mentality Quotes

The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, "I think, therefore I am": Americans do not think, yet they are. The American 'mind,' puerile and primitive, lacks characteristic form and is therefore open to every kind of standardization.

I am more than proud to be European. I love Europe, I love France, but I have an American mentality, and I don't know why. The way I see things, the way I talk, I'm the kind of person who, if I want to say something, I will say it - sometimes in Europe, it's not always what you need to do.

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.

For the Americans, laws are barriers to profits; it's a different mentality.

Sixteen years I've pounded my head against the mentality of America, which...I'd say it's about an 8th grade emotional level.

I like the mentality of the Americans. It's like when you talk about money.

In the '70s and '80s, the mentality of America was that everything was disposable. The notion of quality wasn't important.

Another factor is the education and culture in which you grow up. I didn't grow up in the culture of victory, where you are expected to be or have to be, the best. It was not at all like that in my family. Tennis was really a hobby. If it led to something, great. If not, there were other things in life. I think that was something I was missing at some points in my career, because when I see Hingis or the Williamses, you see how they were educated for this: to win, to be the best, a bit the American mentality. Number one. Number one. Number one. I didn't have this.

Americans like to get rich fast. That this means we go broke fast, too, is something that we have become very good at forgetting. Our ignorance of history is matched only by our unfailing optimism; it's actually part of our optimism.

Certainly the most obvious . . . example of the strictly infantile essence of America's all-conquering mentality greets our eyes daily, anywhere and everywhere, in the guise of the tabloid newspaper. The tabloid newspaper actually means to the typical American of the era what the Bible is popularly supposed to have meant to the typical Pilgrim Father: viz. a very present help in times of trouble, plus a means of keeping out of trouble via harmless, since vicarious, indulgence in the pomps and vanities of this wicked world.

I was slightly cynical of the American mentality before I came over here, but now I preach it. Here, no one's going to tear you down if you buy yourself a $300,000 car. They're likely to say: "Well, you probably worked hard for it. Good luck to you."

I struggled in London for a very long time. 'Be prepared to struggle a lot' - it's a European mentality. The American mentality is positive and 'You can do it' and 'Everything's possible.' In Europe it's an older, more realistic way of thinking. You feel like you're having to prove that you can do it.

I think our team kind of strives on weirdness sometimes. We have that 'rah-rah, rally' sort of American mentality that we can all kind of get around.

This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.