Americanization Quotes

There was nothing left for us to do but to take them [the Philippine Islands] all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them.

However great his outward conformity, the immigrant is not Americanized unless his interests and affections have become deeply rooted here. And we properly demand of the immigrant even more than this. He must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment.

It being perhaps the only large tract of country and certainly the first which lying out of the boundaries of the Union will be settled by the people of the United States.

Efforts to concentrate immigrants in social groups and to retard their Americanization should be steadily frowned down.

Traditionally, the ideology of the United States nationhood perpetuated the myth that immigrants would shed their particularistic ethnic identities and loyalties. Eventually these “strangers” would be assimilated into a homogeneous body politic that was based on the equality of individual rights.

The United States influences government and life everywhere else.

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.

Living here in North America - I have been Americanized. When I go back home now, there are things that I have far less tolerance for in South Africa. We've come such a long way in terms of race relations and the economy as well as people's willingness to move on. There are still a lot of things that are frustrating about being in South Africa.

There is nothing less to our credit than our neglect of the foreigner and his children, unless it be the arrogance most of us betray when we set out to "Americanize" him.

In London - and forget those extra public pressures on politicians - the lovely old Sloane world of manor houses simply hasn't cut it since Big Bang in 1986, the point at which Mrs. Thatcher really started to achieve her ambition to make this country more like America - its ambition, economy, it's very tangible measures of success.

California must be all American or all Chinese. We are resolved that it shall be American, and are prepared to make it so.

I like England more than I did when I left. It's become a bit of a better country in the last ten years, in the attitude of it. A bit more Americanized, which is both good and bad. At least when you order a cup of coffee they don't give you a hard time.

Look, the whole world wants to modernize, and when you look to what they mean by modernizing, they mean Americanize. Would a modern Greek prefer to live in Orange County than Piraeus? Yes. Absolutely.

We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans -- convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution.

I know many people on the left are suspicious of words like Americanization. To them, it can sound like a cover for white privilege and warmongering. It suggests arrogance and groupthink. But these connotations are not fixed. It is in our power to reshape them by recalling the best of America.

In the end, a new Americanization movement can't just be about listing our privileges and immunities, which we catalog in our laws. It also has to be about reinforcing our duties, which we convey in our habits.

The common schools are the stomachs of the country in which all people that come to us are assimilated within a generation. When a lion eats an ox, the lion does not become an ox but the ox becomes a lion.

I remember how, when I lived in Paris, there was a McDonald's, and I'd always see Americans eating there and think, 'Why do they come all the way to Paris and eat at McDonald's?'

In the U.K., we're surrounded by American accents. Anything we watch in television. We have 'How I Met Your Mother' and all these other shows here, so it's not something that's really alien to us.

The French view globalization as synonymous with Americanization, the cultural imperialism that has filled France with bad food, bad films, and English words.

Part of the American administration is not religious. They are neither Evangelists nor Jews, but they have a new ideological theory regarding international policy. They are called the neo-cons. Fifteen years ago, the American intellectuals used to call them crazy, but now they are surprised to find that those crazy people are ruling America, and controlling the entire world. They say: We do not want America to be the leader of the world. We want it to rule and Americanize the world…. The neo-cons are identical to the Nazis.

I'm really Americanized. The only real Latina thing I do is cook rice and beans with chuletas and tostones. I do the healthier version of what my grandmother would have made: a lot less salt, a lot less fat, a lot more vegetables. Sometimes I serve it with brown rice, which is, like, sacrilegious.

We are always going to be influenced by America... I watched the word 'bum' go out and 'butt' come in. And part of me says, oh that's a shame, but Aussie boys are still Aussie boys.

France can never accept that it is no longer a dominating power in the world of culture. This is true both of the French right and the French left. They keep thinking that Americans are primitive cowboys or farmers who do not understand anything.

In Belgium, we know the U.S. culture through the television, but it's not the truth. It's interesting to see that Philadelphia is really industrial. I love industrial cities. Everybody hates them, but I think they're the best places to be creative. The more gritty it is, the more I love it.