Astronauts have been stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. American attempts to kick-start a new phase of lunar exploration have stalled amid the realisation that NASA's budget is too small for the job.

Space offers extraordinary potential for commerce and adventure, for new innovations and new tests of will. As Americans, we can't help but reach for the stars. It's our nature. It's our destiny.

American society loves to prop people up and then take them down.

As much as any woman of the twentieth century, Madam Walker paved the way for the profound social changes that altered women's place in American society.

The scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in the American society.

For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society?

We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

Americans think Soviets are so grim. I want them to see that they can smile.

Southerners smile more than other Americans.

It's been a hard time to celebrate, to come out with a smile. But I'm an American. Naomi asked me to come out to support other Americans, and here I am.

At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an American' because there's a readiness to smile and to talk to people.

What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and '60s: the interstate-highway system, massive funding for science and technology, a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies.

History will judge harshly my Republican colleagues who deny the science of climate change. Similarly, those Democrats who would use climate change as a basis to regulate out of existence the American experience will face the harsh reality that their ideas will fail.

The chances of Israeli science competing with big American science are small. For almost 15 years, we had no competition.

What are the symbols of American strength, wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll, not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It's their skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology.

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, investments in science and technology have proved to be reliable engines of economic growth. If homegrown interest in those fields is not regenerated soon, the comfortable lifestyle to which Americans have become accustomed will draw to a rapid close.

I feel sad when I realize how much truth is being changed or obscured in the American media.

'Sunset Boulevard' - the story of Hollywood movies draped on a depressing sex affair - is an uncompromising study of American decadence displaying a sad, worn, methodical beauty few films have had since the late twenties.

The sad fact is that the same terrorist scenarios, if they occurred in five different States, there could be five different sets of responses to the American people. We need, at a minimum, a level of coordination on communicating threats to the public.

But now Americans, they felt a sense of peace and protection because they've been separated by so many thousands of miles of ocean. And you know, the fact that it's come to the U.S. like this is so sad, and yet you know, what can you do? It's here.

I love the script and I just thought it was a great role. Like I say, it's like this - the script is like this sad, funny, desperate love song to the lost American man.

To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.

At a time when 2500 American soldiers have given their lives for the cause of bringing democracy to Iraq, it is sad and frustrating to watch the Republican establishment disgrace the exercise of democracy in our own House of Representatives.

I love 'The Sportswriter' by Richard Ford. Ford really captures for me the bittersweetness of the quietly suffering American man. It's stoic, sad, and really beautiful.