“Seeking the invisible through the imagery of the visible, the Americans never can get quite all the way to the end of the American dream.”
Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 1, The Gilded Cage, p. 28
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Lewis H. Lapham 34
American journalist 1935Related quotes
“In the end the American dream boils down to what? I'm getting mine and to hell with you.”
General Salter, p. 306
The Profession (2011)
Comment as president of the American Olympic committee when the manager of the American boxing team in the 1928 Olympic games wanted to withdraw the team because of what he thought was an unfair decision against an American boxer; reported in The New York Times (August 9, 1928), p. 13.
1920s
“I think the American dream is still what gets us out of bed every day, that life can be better…”
On the state of the “American Dream” in “A Conversation with Vanessa Hua” https://www.readitforward.com/author-interview/a-conversation-with-vanessa-hua/ in Read It Forward
Get Writing (2004), as quoted in Modern Women Poets (2005) by Deryn Rees-Jones, p. 392
Context: Poems, like dreams, have a visible subject and an invisible one. The invisible one is the one you can't choose, the one that writes itself. Not a message that comes at the end of the poem, more like a pathological condition that deforms every word – a resonance, a manner of speaking, a nervous tic, a pressure. And this invisible subject only shows up when you're speaking the language that you speak when no one is there to correct or applaud you. Remembering that language is the whole skill of writing well.
Linda Ronstadt, Arts Advocacy Day 2009 Congressional Hearing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLo6o_ayKZ0, 1 May 2009
To Soldiers' Angels Gala, Washington, D.C., 6 November 2008 http://www.jcs.mil/chairman/speeches/06NOV08-CJCS-SoldiersAngels.pdf, CJCS.
Context: If you listen closely to the voices of our veterans, you understand that yes, they all returned from war changed, but what never changed is this: They never forgot your generosity. They never forgot the power of opportunity. They never forgot the American dream. They want a job; they want their kids to go to school; they’d like an education, a career, a home. They want to make a difference. It is vital for communities throughout the land to be able to join up – in concert with DOD, VA – so that this dream is still possible for them – for those that sacrificed so much. But it goes far beyond what government can do. We must share the burdens of this war – now the longest conflict this nation has faced with an all-volunteer force since the American Revolution. I am convinced that America’s great sea of goodwill can be, in fact, a rising tide … a tide that could lift every veteran and every family of our wounded and fallen.
