“Europeans used to say Americans were puritanical. Then they discovered that we were not puritans. So now they say that we are obsessed with sex.”

As quoted in "Lady with a Switchblade" in LIFE magazine (20 September 1963) http://books.google.com/books?id=e1IEAAAAMBAJ&q=%22Europeans+used+to+say+Americans+were+puritanical+Then+they+discovered+that+we+were+not+puritans+So+now+they+say+that+we+are+obsessed+with+sex%22&pg=PA62#v=onepage

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Europeans used to say Americans were puritanical. Then they discovered that we were not puritans. So now they say that …" by Mary McCarthy?
Mary McCarthy photo
Mary McCarthy 79
American writer 1912–1989

Related quotes

D.H. Lawrence photo

“To the Puritan all things are impure, as somebody says.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Sketches of Etruscan Places (1932)

Matthew Henry photo

“It was a common saying among the Puritans, "Brown bread and the Gospel is good fare."”

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales

Isaiah 30.
Commentaries

Emil M. Cioran photo

“We must live, you used to say, as if we were never going to die. - Didn't you know that's how everyone lives, including those obsessed with Death?”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Taylor Swift photo
Emma Goldman photo

“So long as one can use scented candy to abate the foul breath of hypocrisy, Puritanism is triumphant.”

Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), The Hypocrisy of Puritanism

George Edward Ellis photo

“I can but repeat now the statement, even at the risk of shocking some readers, that the Puritans were beguiled into the worst of their errors of policy, bigotry, and intolerance, by their belief in and their attempt to follow the teacings which they found in the Bible.”

George Edward Ellis (1814–1894) American Unitarian clergyman and historian (1814-1894)

[The Puritan Age and Rule in the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, 1629-1685, https://books.google.com/books?id=toM-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA31, 31, 1888, Houghton, Mifflin, 978-0-7222-0646-1]

Poul Anderson photo

“It would annoy me less that we’re heading into a new puritanical era if the puritanism concerned itself about things that matter.”

Source: The Boat of a Million Years (1989), Chapter 18 “Judgment Day”, Section 3 (p. 330)

H.L. Mencken photo
H.L. Mencken photo

“The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

A Little Book in C Major, New York, NY, John Lane Company (1916) p. 53
1910s

Doris Lessing photo

Related topics