“There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.”

“The American ideal, after all, is that everyone should be as much alike as possible.”

“Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent.”

“...I didn't feel that I was an American at all, with all that suburban ideal and sex repression and general dreary newspaper grey censorship of all our real human values...”

“We ...recognize the forces which have been trying to falsify American history—the forces which drive away many Americans to a corner of compromise with those who would distort the ideals of men that died for freedom.”

“You'll say things all wrong but they'll at once become American ways of saying things. You won't know shit but it'll right away become an American type of ignorance. Not belonging, that's an old American tradition, see?, that's the American way.”