Famous quotes containing the words united states, california, united and/or states:
“The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion will live here in only the most temporary way.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The traveler to the United States will do well ... to prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)