National Disillusionment Quotes

Donald Trump has a mantra of despair, of loss. He says we don't have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don't. And he says the American dream is dead.

By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

For many Americans, 2016 will be remembered as a terrible year. It was a year in which the lack of faith in our institutions was laid bare.

There is a collapse of public spirit; the victories reported by the Army of Italy have not produced the enthusiasm that the national honor naturally inspires in Frenchmen.

The whole of the situation of the Conservative Party today springs from that night when they dismissed the best prime minister the country had had since Churchill.

Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering, when the country fails to live up to its promises, or actively betrays them.

We must face the bitter fact that we have forsaken our great dream of a life of, for, and by the people; that the burning passions and ideals of the American dream lie congealed by cold cynicism. Great parts of the masses of our people no longer believe that they have a voice or a hand in shaping the destiny of this nation. They have not forsaken democracy because of any desire or positive action of their own; they have been driven down into the depths of a great despair born of frustration, hopelessness, and apathy. A democracy lacking in popular participation dies of paralysis.

We have a big portion of this country that's fed up. We have a president Barack Obama that doesn't have a clue. He doesn't know what's going on. And the people of this country are angry. They're not angry people, but they're angry now.

In the last four years, I heard the same thing over and over again from people: 'We've had enough,' 'Our country is drifting,' 'We've lost our way.'

Canada is not Canada. We are not the country we think we are.

I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidatesas the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought.

There are a lot of heartbroken, anxious people that thought better of their country. We're heartbroken by how far Trump has gotten to the most powerful position in the world.

I don't believe in that country any longer. I'm not interested. I'm writing in the language, and I like the language.

Many Americans, we know, are horrified by the posture of their government but seem to be helpless.

God save the Queen and a fascist regime … a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire

It could fairly be said that America, during the Bush years, has entered an Age of Denial - arguably the first stage of a nation's decline.

By the early seventies I had become an Englishman - that is to say, I hated England just as much as half my compatriots seemed to do.

The people do not approve of Congress. Count me among them… Congress has always been a mockery since the beginning of our country.

All peoples are fed up with the American government.

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

The U.S. that I had imagined was nowhere near as crazy and as incredibly damaging and brutal and indifferent as the U.S. that we're currently living in. I thought I was being transgressive, apocalyptic, an out-there person. And then reality lapped me, it just lapped me.