
“I suddenly began to realize that everybody in America is a natural-born thief.”
Source: On the Road
Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), p. 154
“I suddenly began to realize that everybody in America is a natural-born thief.”
Source: On the Road
Source: Resist Not Evil (1904), p. 40
[Léon Brillouin, Science and Information Theory, second edition, Academic Press, New York, 1962, 0-48643-918-6, 304]
As quoted in "The Notation of the Heart" by Edmund Fuller, in The American Scholar Reader (1960) edited by Hiram Hayden and Betsy Saunders
54 min 25 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]
According to Michael A. Ledeen, this line has been falsely attributed to Tocqueville by Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan. See Tocqueville on American Character (2001), p. 25 http://books.google.com/books?id=gFjQUXYsSR0C&pg=PA25. Hillary Clinton in her acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention (July 29, 2016), said, without attribution, "America is great because America is good."
Misattributed
Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)
War As I Knew It (1947); also quoted in Patton's One-Minute Messages: Tactical Leadership Skills for Business Management (1995) by Charles M. Province, p. 88
Context: There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.