William Pfaff Quotes

Hardly anyone in the world is an American

Thinking that other people might be better than you is what makes you Canadian, not American.

England is better only because I stand out there as 'unusual'.

I've found contemporary Britain difficult to write about because it seems to me to have lacked gravity or grandeur. This is some cultural problem which I don't really understand. It simply isn't the same in the United States.

American and French culture are really, really different, but in a way it's funny.

We're Americans. I don't consider us to be evil, I just don't think we know any better. We're a really young culture. We're hillbillies, and the rest of the world sees us that way. I travel all over the world, and probably the only worse rednecks than us are the Australians. And they're an even younger country.

But the English are different, and they don't know how to be other than different.

American gentlemen are a cross between English and French men, and yet really altogether like neither. They are more refined and modest than Frenchmen, and less manly, shy, and rough, than Englishmen. Their brains are finer and flimsier, their bodies less robust and vigorous than ours. We are the finer animals, and they the subtler spirits. Their intellectual tendency is to excitement and insanity, and ours to stagnation and stupidity.

To me it's very obvious there are huge cultural differences between Americans and Canadians. But a lot of what we are is American.

As soon as I came to L.A., I was told that I was exotic. I'd think, But I'm from Miami! I'm as American as a cheeseburger!

Nationality is not a universal human principle but an historical, local fact...Every nation, even a small one, has its own character, its own particular way of life and manner of speaking, feeling, thinking, and behaving. These distinctive features are the essence of nationality, the product of a nation's entire history and conditions of existence. Every nation, like every individual, is of necessity what it is, and has an unquestionable right to be itself. So-called national rights consist precisely of this.

When I've seen my operas in Europe, they have always struck me as more American than when I hear them here. I can't tell you what that phenomenon is.

I think probably Australians have just a little more taste than most people.

American exceptionalism is the recurring character in the nation's narrative.

Some Russian ballet master woman said there's no culture in America, but if you look you can find interesting stuff in this country, don't you think?

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.

If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives, and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description.

America is a unique place. The value part of American foreign policy is something I think is very laudable, but it is uniquely American. And it is part of what makes America special.

I always thought of myself as more American than Americans when I was living in Germany, because I always had this attitude of can-do, and if you're successful, you can show it, which is a very un-German thing, you know.

Americans are as they are. We have to accept this. Lots of Europeans forget that.

America is not to be Rome or Britain. It is to be America.

I feel that people in Europe are different from Americans - I think your soul is a little deeper.

China is just so different from the rest of the world.

The downside to defining everything Chinese as different than American is that all things Chinese then become exotic.

The English are very exotic to me.