Uncle Sam Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Uncle Sam. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Broke is a relative term, like sister, cousin, or Uncle Sam.

Jarod Kintz (This Book Title is Invisible)
The rich and large corporations get richer, the CEOs earn huge compensation packages, and when things get bad, don't worry; Uncle Sam and the American taxpayers are here to bail you out. But when you are in trouble, well, we just can't afford to help you, if you are in the working class or middle class of this country.
Bernie Sanders (The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class)
I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of taking away your freedoms. –Uncle Sam

Jarod Kintz (This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks (This isn't really my best book))
wouldn't you like to make sure all those millions you give to Uncle Sam went to schools and hospitals instead of nuclear warheads?' As a matter of fact, he would. Playgrounds for big kids, preschool programs to little ones, and mandatory LASIK surgery for NFL refs.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Natural Born Charmer (Chicago Stars, #7))
Today I have gathered together my nearest and dearest, my sixteen nieces and nephews (Sit down, Grace Windsor Wexler!) to view the body of your Uncle Sam for the last time. Tomorrow its ashes will be scattered to the four winds. I, Samuel W. Westing, hereby swear that I did not die of natural causes. My life was taken from me–by one of you!
Ellen Raskin (The Westing Game)
I collect collectivisms. I’ve already got socialism and communism, and all I need is fascism to complete the set. I’m looking to trade my dusty democracy, but Uncle Sam isn’t interested in a deal at this time. 

Jarod Kintz (99 Cents For Some Nonsense)
Some men know the exact amount of money in their bank accounts,” she continued. “Other men know how many miles are on their car and how many more miles it’ll handle. Other men know the batting average of their favorite baseball player and more other men know the exact sum Uncle Sam has screwed ’em. Your father knows no such figures. The only numbers Landon Carpenter has in his head are the numbers of stars in the sky on the days his children were born. I don’t know about you, but I would say that a man who has skies in his head full of the stars of his children, is a man who deserves his child’s love. Especially from the child with the most stars.
Tiffany McDaniel (Betty)
The more government takes in taxes, the less incentive people have to work. What coal miner or assembly-line worker jumps at the offer of overtime when he knows Uncle Sam is going to take sixty percent or more of his extra pay? . . . Any system that penalizes success and accomplishment is wrong. Any system that discourages work, discourages productivity, discourages economic progress, is wrong. If, on the other hand, you reduce tax rates and allow people to spend or save more of what they earn, they’ll be more industrious; they’ll have more incentive to work hard, and money they earn will add fuel to the great economic machine that energizes our national progress. The result: more prosperity for all—and more revenue for government.4
Donald J. Trump (Time to Get Tough: Make America Great Again!)
America was exhausted. The libertarians had made freedom unbearable, the evangelicals had made faith unbearable, the social justice movement had made equality unbearable, the lawyers had made justice unbearable, loud people in Uncle Sam hats had made patriotism unbearable, and the entirety of capitalism over the last two centuries had made industry unbearable. Americans were sick of all the virtues and ready for a straightforward, no-nonsense villain.
Scott Alexander (Unsong)
Although every country thought itself superior in its own way, was there ever a country that coined so many “super” terms from the federal bank of its narcissism, was not only superconfident but also truly superpowerful, that would not be satisfied until it locked every nation of the world into a full nelson and made it cry Uncle Sam?
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer)
Instead of selling other countries weapons, we should sell them candles. Maybe then instead of singing the praises of war, they’d start singing Happy Birthday. And I don’t know anybody, not even my bully of an uncle, Uncle Sam, who wants to start a fight during that song.
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
...it seems to me the Land of Oz is a little ahead of the United States in some of its laws. For here, if one can’t talk clearly, and straight to the point, they send him to Rigmarole Town; while Uncle Sam lets him roam around wild and free, to torture innocent people.
L. Frank Baum (The Emerald City of Oz (Oz, #6))
WHITE AMERICANS HAVE A VERY UNUSUAL SENSE OF HISTORY. They make it up as they go along, constantly revising to suit their tastes in a manner that would make Stalin blush. Very few of them saw any irony in the fact that during a recent nasty Balkans conflict, when Uncle Sam intervened to stop the Serbs from ethnically cleansing the Bosnians, the military action was performed using Apache helicopter gunships. Helicopters named after a people that had been ethnically cleansed in the United States less than one hundred years previously. Sixteen lane highways across the sacred burial grounds. Yee-hah.
Craig Ferguson (Between the Bridge and the River)
But what hope is there for the world, if a nation of penniless peasants can't try to climb up out of the mud without being crushed under the jackboot of Uncle Sam?
Ken Follett
What are you, some kind of superhero?” “Nah, I’m just a guy who sometimes kicks ass for Uncle Sam.” “Okay,” she whispered. “So…just so you know, that’s superhero material in my book.
Zoe York (Fall Away (SEALs Undone, #3))
I should have known better than to lie to the government. People always said Uncle Sam would spend a thousand dollars to get you if you stole a three-cent stamp from him. He was more revengeful than God.
Maya Angelou (Gather Together in My Name)
There was a scrape and crunch of shoes, then a small, smooth hand slid toward her. But it was not Chaol or Sam or Nehemia who lay across from her, watching her with those sad turquoise eyes. Her cheek against the moss, the young princess she had been—Aelin Galathynius—reached a hand for her. “Get up,” she said softly. Celaena shook her head. Aelin strained for her, bridging that rift in the foundation of the world. “Get up.” A promise—a promise for a better life, a better world. The Valg princes paused. She had wasted her life, wasted Marion’s sacrifice. Those slaves had been butchered because she had failed—because she had not been there in time. “Get up,” someone said beyond the young princess. Sam. Sam, standing just beyond where she could see, smiling faintly. “Get up,” said another voice—a woman’s. Nehemia. “Get up.” Two voices together—her mother and father, faces grave but eyes bright. Her uncle was beside them, the crown of Terrasen on his silver hair. “Get up,” he told her gently. One by one, like shadows emerging from the mist, they appeared. The faces of the people she had loved with her heart of wildfire. And then there was Lady Marion, smiling beside her husband. “Get up,” she whispered, her voice full of that hope for the world, and for the daughter she would never seen again.
Sarah J. Maas (Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3))
freedom is what your born with in America, joining the military is how you pay back uncle sam for giving you that freedom
erik mcmullen
You’re under no obligation to accept my oppression, but it is strongly recommended. I’ll make you love me, even if I have to impoverish you and then imprison you. –Uncle Sam
Jarod Kintz (This Book Has No Title)
You just take and take don´t you? Out there with your thumb in the air—not a care in the world, just grabbing whatever you can get. Yes, sir, you just take and take until you´re ready to burst. But what about giving? Did you ever think about that? Of course not—you´re too busy taking, Mr. Handout, Mr. Gimmee, Gimmee, Gimmee. Me, I´m what you call a ´taxpayer.´ Tax, it´s a... tariff that working people have to pay so that someone like yourself can enjoy a life of leisure. I give and give until I´ve got nothing left! Nothing! Then I turn around and give some more. I give and I give to all of Uncle Sam´s little takers, every last one of you, but what´s in it for me? I´ve been thinking that maybe it´s time I get a little something in retum. Yes, indeed, maybe it´s about time we try that shoe on the other foot for a change. You, my young friend, are going to wash my car inside and out. And you´re going to pay for it!
David Sedaris (Naked)
It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war period. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.
Smedley D. Butler (War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier)
I am enormously proud to be an American. I would say that the things that our corporate-controlled government has done at best are shameful and at worst genocidal-but there's an incredible and a permanent culture of resistance in this country that I'm very proud to be a part of. It's not the tradition of slave-owningfounding fathers, it's the tradition of the Frederick Douglasses, the Underground Railroads, the Chief Josephs, the Joe Hills, and the Huey P. Newtons. There's so much to be proud of when you're American that's hidden from you. The incredible courage and bravery of the union organizers in the late 1800's and early 1900's-that's amazing. People of get tricked into going overseas and fighting Uncle Sam's Wall Street wars, but these are people who knew what they were fighting for here at home. I think that that's so much more courageous and brave.
Tom Morello
The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits -- ah! that is another matter -- twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent -- the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.   Of
Smedley D. Butler (War Is A Racket!: And Other Essential Reading)
And when you're not partying in Vegas, what do you do?" she asked. "Prepare for your role as the next James Bond?" "No, I don't work alone." She cocked her head as if trying to make sense of his words. "I'm a SEAL in Uncle Sam's Navy. When I'm working, I have a team of guys who could kick James Bond's ass watching my back, covering my six at all times.
Sara Jane Stone (To Tempt a SEAL (Sin City SEALs, #1))
Dare I admit it? Dare I confess? America, land of supermarkets and superhighways, of supersonic jets and Superman, of supercarriers and the Super Bowl! America, a country not content simply to give itself a name on its bloody birth, but one that insisted for the first time in history on a mysterious acronym, USA, a trifecta of letters outdone later only by the quartet of the USSR. Although every country thought itself superior in its own way, was there ever a country that coined so many “super” terms from the federal bank of its narcissism, was not only superconfident but also truly superpowerful, that would not be satisfied until it locked every nation of the world into a full nelson and made it cry Uncle Sam?
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1))
The upbeat DHS report was some kind of high-water mark for government gall—a tough record to beat. After sitting back and watching the Cabal do all the work, and nearly succeed, Uncle Sam finally found a role for himself: proclaim victory and then stick a flag in it!
Mark Bowden (Worm: The First Digital World War)
Aunt Jayne asks if we'd like to stop somewhere for dessert, and since nodding and smiling is easier than shaking our heads and inventing a reason for not wanting dessert, we okay it without thinking. And since the universe has worked in its own mysterious way all vacation, tonight shouldn't be any different, which is why neither of us is particularly surprised to discover that Jayne is craving a smoothie. ... Once Sam returns to his post behind the counter, Frankie stops kicking me and we slurp down our drinks in about two minutes, anxious to get out of here before anyone recognizes us. Uncle Red and Aunt Jayne, on the other hand, act like this is the last smoothie shop they'll ever see, like smoothies are an endangered species to be appreciated and savored and drawn out as long as possible. With each passing minute, Frankie and I sink lower in our chairs, praying to the God of Annoying Coincidences that Jake doesn't show up and blow our cover.
Sarah Ockler (Twenty Boy Summer)
Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000—count them if you live long enough—was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplanes and airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollarsʼ worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100 or perhaps 300 per cent.
Smedley D. Butler (War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier)
These sectors of the doctrinal system serve to divert the unwashed masses and reinforce the basic social values: passivity, submissiveness to authority, the overriding virtue of greed and personal gain, lack of concern for others, fear of real or imagined enemies, etc. The goal is to keep the bewildered herd bewildered. It's unnecessary for them to trouble themselves with what's happening in the world. In fact, it's undesirable -- if they see too much of reality they may set themselves to change it.
Noam Chomsky (What Uncle Sam Really Wants)
So our next move is to take the entire civil rights struggle – problem – into the United Nations and let the world see that Uncle Sam is guilty of violating the human rights of 22 million Afro-Americans right down to the year of 1964 and still has the audacity or the nerve to stand up and represent himself as the leader of the free world?
Malcolm X (The Ballot or the Bullet)
But a large minority was content to live off the dole. Every two weeks, I’d get a small paycheck and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else.
J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis)
When I pour a bowl of Uncle Sam’s cereal, I never know if I should stand when I eat, salute it first, or simply hum the Star Spangled Banner between mouthfuls.
Chila Woychik (On Being a Rat and Other Observations)
Uncle Sam’s not related to me. He’s stuck his dick in the American Pie too many times to be welcome at my family picnics.
Jarod Kintz (This Book Has No Title)
The government and the highest courts in the land have admitted that this huge area was stolen from us. But stolen or “bought,” Uncle Sam never gives any Indian land back.
Mary Brave Bird (Ohitika Woman)
He’s got a big stomach, Uncle Dillon,” Sam said as he settled in on his father’s lap. “I know, Sam,” Katie said. “His belly nearly fills up the photo we’ve got out there.
Catherine Coulter (Blind Side (FBI Thriller, #8))
Here’s the bottom line. I don’t care if it was Kinko the Klown or a guy in an Uncle Sam suit on stilts or Hubert the Happy Homo. If
Stephen King (It)
He lives like a fugitive to avoid becoming a hired killer in Uncle Sams Army.
James Leo Herlihy (The Season of the Witch)
And we intend to expand it from the level of civil rights to the level of human rights. As long as you fight it on the level of civil rights, you're under Uncle Sam's jurisdiction. You're going to his court expecting him to correct the problem. He created the problem. He's the criminal! You don't take your case to the criminal, you take your criminal to court.
Malcolm X (The Ballot or the Bullet)
I’m not gonna sugarcoat it; it’s downright not fun at times. Sometimes I am mad at the military, at Uncle Sam, even at regular citizens who don’t have a clue of the demands placed on our family.
Jen McDonald (You Are Not Alone: Encouragement for the Heart of a Military Spouse)
Part of me knew it was no great honor to have one’s dialogue praised by a man whose films teemed with lines like “That meteor picked the wrong dude to mess with!” and “Uncle Sam, one. Allah...zip!”But
Joe Keenan (My Lucky Star: A Novel)
Bethesda … Would I be wrong in guessing you work for Uncle Sam?" "Why, yes. You must be very familiar with Washington, Mr. Fenton. Does your work bring you there often?" Anywhere but on our sandbar the little ploy would have worked. My hunter's gene twitches. "Which agency are you with?" She gives up gracefully. "Oh, just GSA records. I'm a librarian." Of course. I know her now, all the Mrs. Parsonses in records divisions, accounting sections, research branches, personnel and administration offices. Tell Mrs. Parsons we need a recap on the external service contracts for fiscal '73. - 'The Women Men Don't See
James Tiptree Jr.
Amir, you look hideous.” My fiancée, Samirah al-Abbas, stared at my outfit in horrified disbelief. “Really?” I looked down at myself. “But it’s a tux!” “A baby-blue tux!” “With a matching ruffled shirt and floppy bow tie,” I said defensively. “My uncle loaned it to me. I think it’ll impress your grandparents, don’t you?” “It’s Jid and Bibi’s fiftieth wedding anniversary!” Sam sputtered. “You can’t wear—” “Samirah.” My father emerged from the kitchen. “He is pulling your leg.” Sam’s reddish-brown eyes blazed dangerously, and I suddenly realized that playing a practical joke on a Valkyrie might not be the best idea I ever had.
Rick Riordan (9 From the Nine Worlds)
It’s bad bein’ strange niggers wid white folks. Everybody is aginst yuh.” “Dat sho is de truth. De ones de white man know is nice colored folks. De ones he don’t know is bad niggers." Janie said this and laughed and Tea Cake laughed with her. "Janie, Ah done watched it time and time again; each and every white man think he know all de GOOD darkies already. He don't need tuh know no mo'. So far as he's concerned, all dem he don't know oughta be tried and sentenced tuh six months behind the United States privy house at hard smellin'." "How come de United States privy house, Tea Cake?" "Well, you know Old Uncle Sam always do have de biggest and de best of everything.
Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)
Get up,’ someone said beyond the young princess. Sam. Sam, standing just beyond where she could see, smiling faintly. ‘Get up,’ said another voice—a woman’s. Nehemia. ‘Get up.’ Two voices together—her mother and father, faces grave but eyes bright. Her uncle was beside them, the crown of Terrasen on his silver hair. ‘Get up,’ he told her gently. One by one, like shadows emerging from the mist, they appeared. The faces of the people. The faces of the people she had loved with her heart of wildfire. And then there was Lady Marion, smiling beside her husband. ‘Get up,’ she whispered, her voice full of that hope for the world, and for the daughter she would never see again.
Sarah J. Maas (Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3))
line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else.
J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis)
Pioneering is not feeling well, not Indians, beasts. Not all their riddling can forestall one leaving. Sam, your uncle has had to go fróm us to live with God. ‘Then Aunt went too?’ Dear, she does wait still. Stricken: ‘Oh. Then he takes us one by one.
John Berryman (Homage to Mistress Bradstreet)
Gilbert: How Clark Gable turn every women's head so? Foolish young English girls would see a movie star in every GI with the same Yankee-doodle voice. Glamour in US privates named Jed, Buck or Chip, with their easy-come-by-gifts and Uncle Sam sweet-talk. Dreamboats in hooligans from Delaware or Arizona with fingernails that still carried soil from home, and eyes that crossed with any attempt at reading. Heart-throbs from men like those in the tea-shop, who dated their very close relatives and knew cattle as their mental equal.
Andrea Levy (Small Island)
it seems to me the Land of Oz is a little ahead of the United States in some of its laws. For here, if one can't talk clearly, and straight to the point, they send him to Rigmarole Town; while Uncle Sam lets him roam around wild and free, to torture innocent people.
L. Frank Baum (The Emerald City of Oz (Oz, #6))
Harper saw a dark young guy, trying to stop from laughing so much. By some trick of perspective the tracers illuminated Sam's profile with a halo of fireflies. Something about him touched Harper, so that long after the gunship had swung low and away Sam's image remained on his retina.
Witi Ihimaera (The Uncle's Story)
I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it is any thing but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum. Of the fact, there could be no doubt; and, examining myself and others, I was led to conclusions in reference to the effect of public office on the character, not very favorable to the mode of life in question. In some other form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice it here to say, that a Custom-House officer, of long continuance, can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his business, which—though, I trust, an honest one—is of such a sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind. An effect—which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who has occupied the position—is, that, while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of self-support. If he possess an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer—fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle amid a struggling world—may return to himself, and become all that he has ever been. But this seldom happens. He usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath of life as he best may. Conscious of his own infirmity,—that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost,—he for ever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself. His pervading and continual hope—a hallucination, which, in the face of all discouragement, and making light of impossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, I fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for a brief space after death—is, that, finally, and in no long time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored to office. This faith, more than any thing else, steals the pith and availability out of whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking. Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will raise and support him? Why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle's pocket? It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle Sam's gold—meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman—has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the Devil's wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
I was in the army.... We went to fight a bad white man, or so the whites told us. We had meetings that were called orientation and education. There were films. It was to show us how this bad white man was doing terrible things in his country. Everybody was angry after the films, and eager to fight. Except me. I was only there because the army paid more than an Indian can earn anywhere else. So I was not angry, but puzzled. There was nothing that this white leader did that the white leaders in this country do not also do. They told us about a place named Lidice. It was much like Wounded Knee. They told us of families moved thousands of miles to be destroyed. It was much like the Trail of Tears. They told us of how this man ruled his nation, so that none dared disobey him. It was much like the way white men work in corporations in New York City, as Sam has described it to me. I asked another soldier about this, a black white man. He was easier to talk to than the regular white man. I asked him what he thought of the orientation and education. He said it was shit, and he spoke from the heart! I thought about it a long time, and I knew he was right. The orientation and education was shit.
Robert Shea (The Eye in the Pyramid (Illuminatus, #1))
Our public lands contain a wealth of natural resources—trees, oil, gas, coal, gold, silver, copper, iron, zinc, and many other minerals, onshore and off. We own these lands. Yet under current law the corporations control their extraction and pay very little to Uncle Sam for what revenues and profits they reap. Sometimes, in fact, they pay just about nothing.
Ralph Nader (The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future)
What was shocking were the rewards my father's cousins had gathered in the intervening couple of decades. They farmed now on thousands of acres, not hundreds. They drove fancy pickup trucks, owned lakefront property and second homes. A simple Internet search offered the truth of where their riches had come from: good ol' Uncle Sam. Recently I clicked again on a database of farm subsidy payments, and found that five of my father's first cousins had been paid, all told, $3 million between 1995 and 2005 - and that on top of whatever they'd earned outright for the sale of their corn and soybeans. They worked hard, certainly. They'd saved and scrimped through the lean years. They were good and honorable yeoman, and now they'd come through to their great reward: a prime place at the trough of the welfare state. All that corn syrup guzzled down the gullets of America's overweight children, all that beef inefficiently fattened on cheap feed, all that ethanol being distilled in heartland refineries: all of it underwritten by as wasteful a government program as now exists this side of the defense industry. In the last ten years, the federal government has paid $131 million in subsidies and disaster insurance in just the county [in Minnesota] where I grew up. Corn is subsidized to keep it cheap, and the subsidies encourage overproduction, which encourages a scramble for ever more ways to use corn, and thus bigger subsidies - the perfect feedback loop of government welfare.
Philip Connors
During World War I, a play would have had short shrift here which showed up General Pershing for a coward; ridiculed the Allies’ cause; brought in Uncle Sam as a blustering bully; glorified the peace party. But when Athens was fighting for her life, Aristophanes did the exact equivalent of all these things many times over and the Athenians, pro-and anti-war alike, flocked to the theatre. The right of a man to say what he pleased was fundamental in Athens. “A slave is he who cannot speak his thought,” said Euripides. Socrates drinking the hemlock in his prison on the charge of introducing new gods and corrupting the youth is but the exception that proves the rule. He was an old man and all his life he had said what he would. Athens had just gone through a bitter time of crushing defeat, of rapid changes of government, of gross mismanagement. It is a reasonable conjecture that he was condemned in one of those sudden panics all nations know, when the people’s fears for their own safety have been worked upon and they turn cruel. Even so, he was condemned by a small majority and his pupil Plato went straight on teaching in his name, never molested but honored and sought after.
Edith Hamilton (The Greek Way)
Earl ‘Blue’ Archer, the Kalinin Bay VC-3 Avenger pilot who suffered a serious back injury amid the brambles of flak over Kurita’s fleet, went home and kept quiet about his infirmity. He soon realized that he had a choice to make: he could take an eighty or ninety percent disability benefit from Uncle Sam and begin a life of inactivity, or he could take three or four aspirin twice a day and continue flying planes in the naval reserve.
James D. Hornfischer (The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour)
King George III, who had made the monumental mistake of learning English, was very much the head of the war party, and so, more in anger than in sorrow, he dropped the mask of Mr. Nice Guy. He would now use his Indians, some thirty thousand German soldiers, mostly from Hesse, a Rhineland province bordering his family’s Hanoverian place of origin. The Hessians turned out to be more generally effective than the American or, indeed, the British troops. They were also considered uncommonly attractive by American girls, who found the homegrown lads a bit on the scrawny, sallow side, later to be caricatured as “Uncle Sam.” By the end of the Revolution, a great many Hessians had married American girls and settled down as contented farmers in the German sections of Pennsylvania and Delaware, their lubricious descendants to this day magically peopling the novels of Mr. John Updike.
Gore Vidal (Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson)
The 1940s was the heyday of pledges and oaths.* In Boy Scout halls, homerooms, and Elks lodges, people were accustomed to signing on the dotted line or standing and reciting, one hand raised. Even the Clean Plate Club—dreamed up by a navy commander in 1942—had an oath: “I, ____, being a member in good standing . . . , hereby agree that I will finish all the food on my plate . . . and continue to do so until Uncle Sam has licked the Japs and Hitler”—like, presumably, a plate.
Mary Roach (Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal)
They were liberating Harrisonville, showing the hypocrites and phonies and $$$-squirrelers and chokeragged Yesmen some puffed-up balls. They were widening the mental horizons of a town more narrow-minded than its streets; they were missionaries laboring amon their bloodkin: montheytheistic theocentric cousins and uncles who swore allegiance to Uncle Sam, Jim Crow, Oral Roberts, and Dale Carnegie; they were waging their impudent revolution against people they'd cowedly called "sir" all their teenage lives.
Joe Eszterhas (Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse)
It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle Sam’s gold—meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman—has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the Devil’s wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
Fair?' Bev said. 'Poor baby. Look, you're really sayin' that the ways of life are glum and grim and nasty, and I guess you want to turn crybaby about that, but what's on my mind is, Whoever misled you things were otherwise, hon? What sugar factory spun you out with such silly candy-assed notions? For cryin' out loud. There's other staples I'll break to you right now, too: The sun gives life but you'd be an ash flake if you got too close to it, you got to swallow water to live but sometimes it kills you, Uncle Sam don't truly count you as any relation, and God has gone blank on your name and face.
Daniel Woodrell (Tomato Red)
But what’s worse than that is the slaves who identified with their masters, as if the slaves’ value as human beings depended on what the masters were like. What they were like was evil! They were called “masters” because they owned human beings! And we slaves were ready to fight each other over which of the lowdown filthy dogs who owned us was the best! But it wasn’t the slaves’ fault. Like Douglass wrote, slaves are like other people. When you think about it, it’s a wonder more black folks didn’t fight with one another instead of fighting against the white man the way Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, David Walker, and a whole lot of others did. While you’re busy shaking your head thinking they were stupid, ask yourself this: are we any better today? Black people put on the uniform of the U.S. military, our masters, and go to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and anywhere else Uncle Sam tells us to go, and fight and kill yellow-skinned folks and brown-skinned folks on behalf of the United States, our masters—just like slaves fighting other slaves. Meanwhile, back home, one out of every half-dozen blacks is locked up for committing the same drug crimes as white dudes who walk around free. What’s wrong with that picture? Then you’ve got blacks in police uniforms out there arresting other innocent blacks. Blacks in America really need to study the Jews in Germany. Those Jews never thought they were part of Hitler’s system, most of them never sided with the people oppressing them. We do. We go to war. What kind of abomination is that? How many blacks go to war because we can’t find a job, and are willing to kill or be killed just so we can feed ourselves and our families? But remember, our already-free Maroon ancestors risked all of that just to free others. Getting back to Frederick Douglass, it’s like he said: Slaves are like other people. Too many of us have that slave mentality. It can take a lot to get past that, but a lot of us have, and Frederick Douglass was one.
Dick Gregory (Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies)
They carved it up with surgical precision…And if anyone was a thief, God bless them, maybe their grandchildren will turn out decent. Ugh! And these are the democrats…[Silence.] They put on American suits and did what their Uncle Sam told them to do. But American suits don’t fit them right. They sit crooked. That’s what you get! It wasn’t freedom they were after, it was blue jeans, supermarkets…They were fooled by the shiny wrappers…Now our stores are filled with all sorts of stuff. An abundance. But heaps of salami have nothing to do with happiness. Or glory. We used to be a great nation! Now we’re nothing but peddlers and looters…grain merchants and managers…
Svetlana Alexievich (Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets)
The first prick stung—holy gods, with the salt and iron, it hurt. She clamped her teeth together, mastered it, welcomed it. That was what the salt was for with this manner of tattoo, Rowan had told her. To remind the bearer of the loss. Good—good, was all she could think as the pain spiderwebbed through her back. Good. And when Rowan made the next mark, she opened her mouth and began her prayers. They were prayers she should have said ten years ago: an even-keeled torrent of words in the Old Language, telling the gods of her parents’ death, her uncle’s death, Marion’s death—four lives wiped out in those two days. With each sting of Rowan’s needle, she beseeched the faceless immortals to take the souls of her loved ones into their paradise and keep them safe. She told them of their worth—told them of the good deeds and loving words and brave acts they’d performed. Never pausing for more than a breath, she chanted the prayers she owed them as daughter and friend and heir. For the hours Rowan worked, his movements falling into the rhythm of her words, she chanted and sang. He did not speak, his mallet and needles the drum to her chanting, weaving their work together. He did not disgrace her by offering water when her voice turned hoarse, her throat so ravaged she had to whisper. In Terrasen she would sing from sunrise to sunset, on her knees in gravel without food or drink or rest. Here she would sing until the markings were done, the agony in her back her offering to the gods. When it was done her back was raw and throbbing, and it took her a few attempts to rise from the table. Rowan followed her into the nearby night-dark field, kneeling with her in the grass as she tilted her face up to the moon and sang the final song, the sacred song of her household, the Fae lament she’d owed them for ten years. Rowan did not utter a word while she sang, her voice broken and raw. He remained in the field with her until dawn, as permanent as the markings on her back. Three lines of text scrolled over her three largest scars, the story of her love and loss now written on her: one line for her parents and uncle; one line for Lady Marion; and one line for her court and her people. On the smaller, shorter scars, were the stories of Nehemia and of Sam. Her beloved dead. No longer would they be locked away in her heart. No longer would she be ashamed.
Sarah J. Maas (Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3))
He told me about his basic disagreement with Warren. “One of the most frequent questions asked is about a power struggle between me and Warren,” Blackmore said. “Now I don’t know what that is, but I will tell you about my own struggle. I had to struggle when I was told that there was not enough time left to help anyone repent. I struggled when I saw men who had been restored and forgiven in the days of Uncle Roy and Uncle Rulon, and now have their families swept away from them and their homes given to another. I struggled when I saw men’s wages given to the church, and then see their boss go buy a new Lexus. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t struggle trying to believe there could be anything ‘Mormon’ about what was happening.
Sam Brower (Prophet's Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints)
Here is a cutting from the Ladies’ Home Journal of Philadelphia: Uncle Sam set apart a royal pleasure ground in North Western Wyoming and called it Yellowstone National Park. To give an idea of what its size—3,312 square miles—really means, let us clear the floor of the park and tenderly place some of the great cities of the world there, close together as children do their blocks. First put in London, then Greater New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Paris, Boston, Berlin, St. Louis, Hong Kong, San Francisco and Washington. The floor of the park should be about half covered, then lift up Rhode Island. Carefully, so as not to spill any of its people, set it down and press in the West Indies. And even then there are 200 square miles left.
A.A. Gill (To America with Love)
You laugh!” said the trader, with a growl. “Lord bless you, Mas’r, I couldn’t help it now,” said Sam, giving way to the long pent-up delight of his soul. “She looked so curi’s, a leapin’ and springin’ — ice a crackin’ — and only to hear her, — plump! ker chunk! ker splash! Spring! Lord! how she goes it!” and Sam and Andy laughed till the tears rolled down their cheeks.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin)
While sitting alone in his uncle’s study, Ramana suddenly became paralyzed by a fear of death. He lay down on the floor, convinced that he would soon die, but rather than remaining terrified, he decided to locate the self that was about to disappear. He focused on the feeling of “I”—a process he later called “self-inquiry”—and found it to be absent from the field of consciousness.
Sam Harris (Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion)
fridge, a stove and a Bendix washing machine. For an extra 250 dollars you could have a car as well; the buyer of that package was all set for the future. The Levitts erected their first houses in a huge potato field in Hempstead, twenty miles from Manhattan, in 1946. Within two years the place had become a town in its own right. By July 1948, 180 houses were being manufactured every week, and just three years later 82,000 people were living on the old potato field in 17,000 prefab dwellings. Most of those drawn to the brand-new Levittown were GIs, each with a generous discharge payment in his pocket. The ads didn’t exaggerate; the instalment plan was generous: ‘Uncle Sam and the world’s largest builder have made it possible for you to live in a charming house in a delightful community
Geert Mak (In America: Travels with John Steinbeck)
I was afraid of anyone in a costume. A trip to see Santa might as well have been a trip to sit on Hitler's lap for all the trauma it would cause me. Once, when I was four, my mother and I were in a Sears and someone wearing an enormous Easter Bunny costume headed my way to present me with a chocolate Easter egg. I was petrified by this nightmarish six-foot-tall bipedal pink fake-fur monster with human-sized arms and legs and a soulless, impassive face heading toward me. It waved halfheartedly as it held a piece of candy out in an evil attempt to lure me into its clutches. Fearing for my life, I pulled open the bottom drawer of a display case and stuck my head inside, the same way an ostrich buries its head in the sand. This caused much hilarity among the surrounding adults, and the chorus of grown-up laughter I heard echoing from within that drawer only added to the horror of the moment. Over the next several years, I would run away in terror from a guy in a gorilla suit whose job it was to wave customers into a car wash, a giant Uncle Sam on stilts, a midget dressed like a leprechaun, an astronaut, the Detroit Tigers mascot, Ronald McDonald, Big Bird, Bozo the Clown, and every Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto, Chip and Dale, Uncle Scrooge, and Goofy who walked the streets at Disneyland. Add to this an irrational fear of small dogs that saw me on more than one occasion fleeing in terror from our neighbor's four-inch-high miniature dachschund as if I were being chased by the Hound of the Baskervilles and a chronic case of germ phobia, and it's pretty apparent that I was--what some of the less politically correct among us might call--a first-class pussy.
Paul Feig (Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence)
Samwell Tarly looked at him for a long moment, and his round face seemed to cave in on itself. He sat down on the frost-covered ground and began to cry, huge choking sobs that made his whole body shake. Jon Snow could only stand and watch. Like the snowfall on the barrowlands, it seemed the tears would never end. It was Ghost who knew what to do. Silent as shadow, the pale direwolf moved closer and began to lick the warm tears off Samwell Tarly's face. The fat boy cried out, startled... and somehow, in a heartbeat, his sobs turned to laughter. Jon Snow laughed with him. Afterward they sat on the frozen ground, huddled in their cloaks with Ghost between them. Jon told the story of how he and Robb had found the pups newborn in the late summer snows. It seemed a thousand years ago now. Before long he found himself talking of Winterfell. "Sometimes I dream about it," he said. "I'm walking down this long empty hall. My voice echoes all around, but no one answers, so I walk faster, opening doors, shouting names. I don't even know who I'm looking for. Most nights it's my father, but sometimes it's Robb instead, or my little sister Arya, or my uncle." The thought of Benjen Stark saddened him; his uncle was still missing. The Old Bear had sent out rangers in search of him. Ser Jaremy Rykker had led two sweeps, and Quorin Halfhand had gone forth from the Shadow Tower, but they'd found nothing aside from a few blazes in the trees that his uncle had left to mark his way. In the stony highlands to the northwest, the marks stopped abruptly and all trace of Ben Stark vanished. "Do you ever find anyone in your dream?" Sam asked. Jon shook his head. "No one. The castle is always empty." He had never told anyone of the dream, and he did not understand why he was telling Sam now, yet somehow it felt good to talk of it. "Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones. That always scares me. I start to run then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream." He stopped, frowning, embarrassed. "That's when I always wake." His skin cold and clammy, shivering in the darkness of his cell. Ghost would leap up beside him, his warmth as comforting as daybreak. He would go back to sleep with his face pressed into the direwolf s shaggy white fur.
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
The traumatic aspect of drinking ayahuasca is that in order to heal yourself, you must first confront the wound; by forcing you to deal with your own inner garbage, ayahuasca shows you things about yourself that you might not want to see. I wish that a whole country could drink ayahuasca—not merely every individual citizen of a country, but the country itself, the spirit of the country. I wish that a flag could drink ayahuasca, that we could just fold the Stars and Stripes into the shape of a cup, pour in the tea, and transport Uncle Sam into another dimension. He’d have to fight his way out of some nightmares, but he’d be cleansed. What would he find? William S. Burroughs wrote that when you drink ayahuasca, “The blood and substance of many races, Negro, Polynesian, Mountain Mongol, Desert Nomad, Polyglot Near East, Indian—new races as yet unconceived and unborn, combinations not yet realized—pass through your body.” When Burroughs drank, he actually saw himself transformed into both a black man and a black woman. What if some freedom-hating narcoterrorists snuck into the Fox News studios and put ayahuasca in Sean Hannity’s coffee, just before he went live? What would be the day’s fair and balanced news for America? If America drank ayahuasca and then withdrew into the filthy pit of its own heart, confronting all its fears and hate and finally purging itself of that negative energy, maybe America would come out Muslim: sucked through a black hole by the Black Mind, young Latter-Day Saint crackers with smooth cheeks, short-sleeved white shirts, and name tags confront nightmarish visions of getting swallowed whole by giant grotesque “Jolly Nigger” coin banks and then find themselves vomited back up as Nubian Islamic Hebrews in turbans and robes selling incense on the subways. The “God Hates Fags” pastor, eyes wild with a new passion for Allah, boards a helicopter to drop thousands of Qur’ans upon the small towns below. I want to see ayahuasca’s vine goddess clean out America’s poison. But what would happen if a religion could drink the vine? What if I poured ayahuasca into my Qur’an?
Michael Muhammad Knight (Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing)
The difference gave China a $420 billion trade surplus (the US carried the opposite, a $420 billion trade deficit with China). Americans paid for those goods with US dollars, and those payments were credited to China’s bank account at the Federal Reserve. Like any other holder of US dollars, China has the option to sit on those dollars or use them to buy something else. Uncle Sam doesn’t pay interest on the dollars China keeps in its checking account at the Fed, so China usually prefers to move them into what is effectively a savings account at the Fed. It does this by purchasing US Treasuries. “Borrowing from China” involves nothing more than an accounting adjustment, whereby the Federal Reserve subtracts numbers from China’s reserve account (checking) and adds numbers to its securities account (savings). It’s still just sitting on its US dollars, but now China is holding yellow dollars instead of green dollars. To pay back China, the Fed simply reverses the accounting entries, marking down the number in its securities account and marking up the number in its reserve account. It’s all accomplished using nothing more than a keyboard at the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
Stephanie Kelton (The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy)
Jon: Sometimes I dream about it. I'm walking down this long empty hall. My voice echoes all around, but no one answers, so I walk faster, opening door, shouting names. I don't even know who I'm looking for. Most nights it's my father, but sometimes it's Robb instead, or my little sister Arya, or my uncle. Sam: Do you ever find anyone in your dream? Jon: No one. The castle is always empty. Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones, That always scares me. I start to run then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream. That's when I always wake.
George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1-4))
When we talk about building wealth, we ought to refer to one’s entire net worth, meaning the sum of savings and total assets, minus all debt. If you have $50,000 in your TSP and in other savings accounts, but owe $50,000 on credit cards, a car or two, and student loans, have you really built up any “wealth”? While you have saved up a tidy sum in the TSP and in savings accounts, since you owe so much to creditors, your total net worth in this scenario is actually zero.* Consider also that, instead of receiving interest and dividend payments in the TSP, each of your debts is charging you interest—and in many cases considerable interest.
W. Lee Radcliffe (TSP Investing Strategies: Building Wealth While Working for Uncle Sam)
The Camera Eye (38) sealed signed and delivered all over Tours you can smell lindens in bloom it’s hot my uniform sticks the OD chafes me under the chin only four days ago AWOL crawling under the freight cars at the station of St. Pierre-des-Corps waiting in the buvette for the MP on guard to look away from the door so’s I could slink out with a cigarette (and my heart) in my mouth then in a tiny box of a hotel room changing the date on that old movement order but today my discharge sealed signed and delivered sends off sparks in my pocket like a romancandle I walk past the headquarters of the SOS Hay sojer your tunic’s unbuttoned (f—k you buddy) and down the lindenshaded street to the bathhouse that has a court with flowers in the middle of it the hot water gushes green out of brass swanheads into the whitemetal tub I strip myself naked soap myself all over with the sour pink soap slide into the warm deepgreen tub through the white curtain in the window a finger of afternoon sunlight lengthens on the ceiling towel’s dry and warm smells of steam in the suitcase I’ve got a suit of civvies I borrowed from a fellow I know the buck private in the rear rank of Uncle Sam’s Medical Corps (serial number . . . never could remember the number anyway I dropped it in the Loire) goes down the drain with a gurgle and hiss and having amply tipped and gotten the eye from the fat woman who swept up the towels I step out into the lindensmell of a July afternoon and stroll up to the café where at the little tables outside only officers may set their whipcord behinds and order a drink of cognac unservable to those in uniform while waiting for the train to Paris and sit down firmly in long pants in the iron chair an anonymous civilian
John Dos Passos (1919 (The U.S.A. Trilogy, #2))
Herein lay the rub. The Americans, like all Western armies, defined “winning” as killing the enemy and securing control over the battlefield. Their opponents in previous conflicts had generally accepted the same definition. Not so the Moros. What was important to them was the struggle and how one conducted oneself, personally and as a people, not necessarily a measurable outcome. They knew from the beginning they were no match for American firepower. It was a one-sided contest, what today is termed “asymmetric warfare,” but so what? Their measure was how well one did against the odds, the more overwhelmingly they were against one, the greater the glory. And being that life is transitory anyway, what mattered most was how much courage was shown and how well did one die. The Americans and the Moros were using different score cards for the same game. To the Moros, it was they who had “won.
Robert A. Fulton (MOROLAND: The History of Uncle Sam and the Moros 1899 - 1920)
Somewhere in between are the rest of us natives, in whom such change revives long-buried anger at those faraway people who seem to govern the world: city people, educated city people who win and control while the rest of us work and lose. Snort at the proposition if you want, but that was the view I grew up with, and it still is quite prevalent, though not so open as in those days. These are the sentiments the fearful rich and the Republicans capitalize on in order to kick liberal asses in elections. The Democrats' 2006 midterm gains should not fool anyone into thinking that these feelings are not still out here in this heartland that has so rapidly become suburbanized. It is still politically profitable to cast matters as a battle between the slick people, liberals all, and the regular Joes, people who like white bread and Hamburger Helper and "normal" beer. When you are looking around you in the big cities at all those people, it's hard to understand that there are just as many out here who never will taste sushi or, in all likelihood, fly on an airplane other than when we are flown to boot camp, compliments of Uncle Sam. Only 20 percent of Americans have ever owned a passport. To the working people I grew up with, sophistication of any and all types, and especially urbanity, is suspect. Hell, those city people have never even fired a gun. Then again, who would ever trust Jerry Seinfeld or Dennis Kucinich or Hillary Clinton with a gun? At least Dick Cheney hunts, even if he ain't safe to hunt with. George W. Bush probably knows a good goose gun when he sees one. Guns are everyday tools, like Skil saws and barbecue grills. So when the left began to demonize gun owners in the 1960s, they not only were arrogant and insulting because they associated all gun owners with criminals but also were politically stupid. It made perfect sense to middle America that the gun control movement was centered in large urban areas, the home to everything against which middle America tries to protect itself—gangbangers, queer bars, dope-fiend burglars, swarthy people jabbering in strange languages. From the perspective of small and medium-size towns all over the country, antigun activists are an overwrought bunch.
Joe Bageant (Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War)
-Sometimes I dream about it. I'm walking down this long empty hall. My voice echoes all around, but no one answers, so I walk faster, opening door, shouting names. I don't even know who I'm looking for. Most nights it's my father, but sometimes it's Robb instead, or my little sister Arya, or my uncle. -Do you ever find anyone in your dream? -No one. The castle is always empty. Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones, That always scares me. I start to run then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream. That's when I always wake. Jon and Sam
George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1-4))
During his time working for the head of strategy at the bank in the early 1990s, Musk had been asked to take a look at the company’s third-world debt portfolio. This pool of money went by the depressing name of “less-developed country debt,” and Bank of Nova Scotia had billions of dollars of it. Countries throughout South America and elsewhere had defaulted in the years prior, forcing the bank to write down some of its debt value. Musk’s boss wanted him to dig into the bank’s holdings as a learning experiment and try to determine how much the debt was actually worth. While pursuing this project, Musk stumbled upon what seemed like an obvious business opportunity. The United States had tried to help reduce the debt burden of a number of developing countries through so-called Brady bonds, in which the U.S. government basically backstopped the debt of countries like Brazil and Argentina. Musk noticed an arbitrage play. “I calculated the backstop value, and it was something like fifty cents on the dollar, while the actual debt was trading at twenty-five cents,” Musk said. “This was like the biggest opportunity ever, and nobody seemed to realize it.” Musk tried to remain cool and calm as he rang Goldman Sachs, one of the main traders in this market, and probed around about what he had seen. He inquired as to how much Brazilian debt might be available at the 25-cents price. “The guy said, ‘How much do you want?’ and I came up with some ridiculous number like ten billion dollars,” Musk said. When the trader confirmed that was doable, Musk hung up the phone. “I was thinking that they had to be fucking crazy because you could double your money. Everything was backed by Uncle Sam. It was a no-brainer.” Musk had spent the summer earning about fourteen dollars an hour and getting chewed out for using the executive coffee machine, among other status infractions, and figured his moment to shine and make a big bonus had arrived. He sprinted up to his boss’s office and pitched the opportunity of a lifetime. “You can make billions of dollars for free,” he said. His boss told Musk to write up a report, which soon got passed up to the bank’s CEO, who promptly rejected the proposal, saying the bank had been burned on Brazilian and Argentinian debt before and didn’t want to mess with it again. “I tried to tell them that’s not the point,” Musk said. “The point is that it’s fucking backed by Uncle Sam. It doesn’t matter what the South Americans do. You cannot lose unless you think the U.S. Treasury is going to default. But they still didn’t do it, and I was stunned. Later in life, as I competed against the banks, I would think back to this moment, and it gave me confidence. All the bankers did was copy what everyone else did. If everyone else ran off a bloody cliff, they’d run right off a cliff with them. If there was a giant pile of gold sitting in the middle of the room and nobody was picking it up, they wouldn’t pick it up, either.” In
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future)
American DEWAR FAMILY Cameron Dewar Ursula “Beep” Dewar, his sister Woody Dewar, his father Bella Dewar, his mother PESHKOV-JAKES FAMILY George Jakes Jacky Jakes, his mother Greg Peshkov, his father Lev Peshkov, his grandfather Marga, his grandmother MARQUAND FAMILY Verena Marquand Percy Marquand, her father Babe Lee, her mother CIA Florence Geary Tony Savino Tim Tedder, semiretired Keith Dorset OTHERS Maria Summers Joseph Hugo, FBI Larry Mawhinney, Pentagon Nelly Fordham, old flame of Greg Peshkov Dennis Wilson, aide to Bobby Kennedy Skip Dickerson, aide to Lyndon Johnson Leopold “Lee” Montgomery, reporter Herb Gould, television journalist on This Day Suzy Cannon, gossip reporter Frank Lindeman, television network owner REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth U.S. president Jackie, his wife Bobby Kennedy, his brother Dave Powers, assistant to President Kennedy Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press officer Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Lyndon B. Johnson, thirty-sixth U.S. president Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh U.S. president Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth U.S. president Ronald Reagan, fortieth U.S. president George H. W. Bush, forty-first U.S. president British LECKWITH-WILLIAMS FAMILY Dave Williams Evie Williams, his sister Daisy Williams, his mother Lloyd Williams, M.P., his father Eth Leckwith, Dave’s grandmother MURRAY FAMILY Jasper Murray Anna Murray, his sister Eva Murray, his mother MUSICIANS IN THE GUARDSMEN AND PLUM NELLIE Lenny, Dave Williams’s cousin Lew, drummer Buzz, bass player Geoffrey, lead guitarist OTHERS Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz Sam Cakebread, friend of Jasper Murray Byron Chesterfield (real name Brian Chesnowitz), music agent Hank Remington (real name Harry Riley), pop star Eric Chapman, record company executive German FRANCK FAMILY Rebecca Hoffmann Carla Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive mother Werner Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive father Walli Franck, son of Carla Lili Franck, daughter of Werner and Carla Maud von Ulrich, née Fitzherbert, Carla’s mother Hans Hoffmann, Rebecca’s husband OTHERS Bernd Held, schoolteacher Karolin Koontz, folksinger Odo Vossler, clergyman REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (Communist) Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s successor Egon Krenz, successor to Honecker Polish Stanislaw “Staz” Pawlak, army officer Lidka, girlfriend of Cam Dewar Danuta Gorski, Solidarity activist REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Anna Walentynowicz, crane driver Lech Wałesa, leader of the trade union Solidarity General Jaruzelski, prime minister Russian DVORKIN-PESHKOV FAMILY Tanya Dvorkin, journalist Dimka Dvorkin, Kremlin aide, Tanya’s twin brother Anya Dvorkin, their mother Grigori Peshkov, their grandfather Katerina Peshkov, their grandmother Vladimir, always called Volodya, their uncle Zoya, Volodya’s wife Nina, Dimka’s girlfriend OTHERS Daniil Antonov, features editor at TASS Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief Vasili Yenkov, dissident Natalya Smotrov, official in the Foreign Ministry
Ken Follett (Edge of Eternity (The Century Trilogy, #3))
I can Grandma like nobody’s business. Hey, mind your own, grandpa, before I go all Uncle Sam on your ass.
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
In the meantime, the Islamist movement bided its time. Even back then, there were those who suspected that the invisible hand pulling those particular strings belonged to Uncle Sam.
Ayşe Kulin (Without a Country)
But if you die before you get paid, rest assured Uncle Sam will take your hard earned money as a generous contribution, and make sure your family gets a heartfelt letter showing our gratitude. And, your family gets automatically entered to win a free iPad if they decide not to make us give you a funeral. (Families of limbless receive a gift certificate to Red Lobster*) *Only participating Red Lobsters: Guam Military Base, Undisclosed Location #1, Undisclosed Location #2.
Mike Sov (I Like Poop)
As Noam Chomsky so well explains in his book, What Uncle Sam Really Wants: When his rule was challenged by the Sandinistas [the insurgent group named after Augusto Cesar Sandino] in the late 1970s, the US first tried to institute what was called “Somocismo [Somoza-ism] without Somoza”- that is, the whole corrupt system intact, but with somebody else at the top. That didn’t work, so President Carter tried to maintain Somoza’s National Guard as a base for US power. The National Guard had always been remarkably brutal and sadistic. By June 1979, it was carrying out massive atrocities in the war against the Sandinistas, bombing residential neighborhoods in Managua, killing tens of thousands of people. At that point, the US ambassador sent a cable to the White House saying it would be “ill advised” to tell the Guard to call off the bombing, because that might interfere with the policy of keeping them in power and the Sandinistas out. Our ambassador to the Organization of American States also spoke in favor of “Somocismo without Somoza,” but the OAS rejected the suggestion flat out. A few days later, Somoza flew off to Miami with what was left of the Nicaraguan national treasury, and the Guard collapsed. The Carter administration flew Guard commanders out of the country in planes with Red Cross markings (a war crime), and began to reconstitute the Guard on Nicaragua’s borders. They also used Argentina as a proxy. (At that time, Argentina was under the rule of neo-Nazi generals, but they took a little time off from torturing and murdering their own population to help reestablish the Guard -- soon to be renamed the contras, or “freedom fighters.”)3 Again, we see Jimmy Carter not really living up to all of his lofty human rights rhetoric.
Dan Kovalik (The Plot to Attack Iran: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Iran)
Tax-Deferred does not mean Tax-Free It never ceases to amaze me when I meet with people who do not know that tax-deferred does not mean tax-free. You mean I have to pay taxes when I take this money!? This is not all mine!? These are common remarks I hear as we are looking at their most recent retirement account statement. Somehow this consideration was missed when they enrolled in the savings plan and each year when they postponed the tax when filing their tax return. I am not a tax professional but I can understand how an accountant or tax preparer wouldn’t think to make sure the client understands that they are postponing taxes and the tax calculation during their working years. I met an accountant that expressed how difficult it is when he gets the client that believed they were ready to leave work only to find out that because of taxes they are coming up a little or a lot short. This happened to one of my relatives that worked at least 30 years as an x-ray technician and then supervisor at a very large hospital. While working, they always had the nice houses, the nice cars, and a nice upper-middle class lifestyle, nothing fancy. After he retired and even though his wife still worked as a school principal, he had to take a sales clerk job at a nearby liquor store so that his family could maintain their lifestyle. I will never forget other relatives joking and laughing about him miscalculating his retirement. I’m certain that his unsuccessful retirement and that of other relatives influenced my interest in retirement planning if for no one else but me. With a limited amount of retirement income, most retirees would prefer to keep their dollars rather than give them to Uncle Sam. Even those with an unlimited source of funds don’t want to pay more taxes than necessary. Fortunately, there are some ways to decrease your tax burden once you’ve done the obvious work of ensuring you’ve taken all the deductions and credits to which you’re entitled when you file your taxes.
Annette Wise
It’s ultimately a numbers game. American men who are stable, intelligent, and productive are simply being bred out of existence. 40% of all American children are now being born into the same circumstances which have destroyed communities of previous empires and current ones. That number will continue to rise as Western women, in particular, begin to double-down on the bad-boy cock carousel, celebrate baby-daddy syndrome, and claim their cash and prizes from the state—for being such good little prostitutes for pimp-daddy Uncle Sam.
Frank Cervi (Uncle Nick: Diary of a Misanthrope)
How’s fake almost-married life treating you?” “I kissed her.” He chugged down a quarter of the mug. “Yeah, so? Engaged people do that sometimes.” “I kissed her after Cat left the room. I didn’t kiss her because we were pretending. I kissed her because…Hell, I don’t need to draw you a map.” “When did that happen?” Sean looked at his watch. “About a half hour ago.” Kevin gave a low whistle. “She still sleeping on the couch?” “Yes. And she’s staying there, too, goddammit.” “Did she punch you in the face? Knee you in the balls?” “No.” Kevin grinned. “So what’s the problem? You want her. She can at least tolerate you. Get it out of your system.” He was afraid sleeping with Emma wouldn’t get her out of his system, but get her a little further under his skin, instead. “Bad idea.” “Call it a fringe benefit.” “She’s already pretending she’s in love with me. Throwing real sex on top of that could get it all mixed up in her head.” “You worried about her mixing it up…or you?” That was ridiculous, so he snorted and swallowed some more beer. He had no interest in settling down—signing his life over to somebody else so soon after getting it back from Uncle Sam—and he sure as hell wasn’t planting flowers until retirement age. Assuming he didn’t lose his mind and suffocate himself in a mound of mulch before then.
Shannon Stacey (Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3))
The basic element that will distinguish those that are for godliness from those that are promoting ungodliness is if such individuals possess the spirit of godliness and not just a form of it.
Sunday Adelaja (Stop Working for Uncle Sam: If you are working for money you are under Uncle Sam system. You need to get out fast. This book will help you do it.)
anybody buying a qualified plug-in electric car—the list of approved vehicles includes sleek, sporty cars like the $105,000 Tesla Model S P85D and the $138,000 BMW i8—can subtract up to $7,500 from the income tax he or she owes Uncle Sam.
T.R. Reid (A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System)
I close my eyes. I hear the voices of the past in the wind and in the beating of my heart. My two mothers, my two fathers, and my dear uncle all tried to tell me I was wrong about the People's Republic of China. In the beginning, going all the way back to the University of Chicago, I thought socialism and communism were good, that people should share equally, that it wasn't fair that my family had suffered in America when others drove fancy cars, lived in big houses, and shopped in Beverly Hills. I ran away and came here in hopes of finding an ideal world, to find my birth father, to avoid my mother and aunt, and to crush my guilt. None of that worked the way I expected. The ideal world was filled with hypocrisy and with people like Z.G., who went to parties while the masses suffered. In finding my birth father, I only remembered how wonderful my father Sam was. He loved me unconditionally, while Z.G. wanted me as a muse, as a pretty daughter to show off, as a physical manifestation of his love for Auntie May, as an artist who would reflect how great an artist he is. I thought I could use idealism to solve my inner conflicts, but in healing my inner conflicts I destroyed my idealism. As I gaze into my daughter's face, everything becomes very clear. My mother and aunt loved me, stood by me, and supported me, no matter what. They were both good mothers. My greatest misery and grief is that I have not been a good mother and I can't save my daughter. I pray that in our final days and hours Samantha will know how much I love her.
Lisa See (Dreams of Joy (Shanghai Girls, #2))
George Powers of Little Rock, Arkansas, made a statement which was read at a public indignation meeting in Los Angeles on October 12, 1857, and which was widely reported in California newspapers. Describing conditions in Utah, he said: We found the Mormons making very determined preparations to fight the United States troops, whenever they may arrive. On our way in, we met three companies of 100 men each, armed and on the road toward the pass above Fort Bridger... We found companies drilling every evening in the city. The Mormons declared to us that no U.S. troops should ever cross the mountains; they talked and acted as though they were willing to take a brush with Uncle Sam... We came on to Buttermilk Fort, near the Lone Cedar 176 miles, and found the inhabitants greatly enraged at the train that had just passed... The people [the Mormons] had refused to sell the train any provisions, and told us they were sorry they had not killed them there; but they knew it would be done before they got in. They stated further that they were holding their Indians in check until the arrival of their chief, when he would follow the train and cut it to pieces.
Juanita Brooks (The Mountain Meadows Massacre)
you should try a different approach. First you should work entirely outside of the organized UFO groups; they are infiltrated by the same official agencies they are trying to influence, and they propagate any rumor anyone wants to have circulated. In Intelligence circles, people like that are historical necessities. We call them ‘useful idiots.’ When you’ve worked long enough for Uncle Sam, you know he is involved in a lot of strange things. The data these groups get are biased at the source, but they play a useful role.
Colm A. Kelleher (Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah)
99 percent of the world's warzones are the legacy of white, western imperialism. Until you get your head around this simple fact, your views, your opinion, your advocacy, all are worthless to the peace struggles of these "westsploited" nations. In the modern age no other country has wrecked more nations than America. Like father, like son - first it was England, then it's its rebellious runaway child America. That's why China is such an enemy in the westwashed narrative of the world - because when one nation has somewhat maintained an autocratic control over the planet since the 1800s (under the banner of "Manifest Destiny"), it would never want that control be undermined by another budding power - particularly when that power is far superior in infrastructure. Sure, the state of China tries to influence every move of its people, that's the first unwritten rule in the handbook of "democracy" - but Uncle Sam has been manipulating the moves of every single state for over two hundred years. Now tell me, which state should you be more cautious of? No country is free from human rights violation, but America's share in global transgressions is right at the very top. America is the top exporter of humanitarian crisis in the world, and as such, US is the least qualified nation to be the moral guardian on anything. It doesn't matter whether you are white, colored or martian - denial never solves nothing. To treat a disease we must first acknowledge the disease. And what is the disease? Is it white people - is it whiteness? No - whiteness is not the disease, but white imperialism is. And how do you treat this disease? You gotta strip yourself of all the privileges of skin, and make yourself one with the world - you gotta denounce the privilege of your whiteness and embrace the responsibility of your humanness. Only then, shall there be peace in the world - only then, shall there be integration - only then, shall there be a civilized world to begin with.
Abhijit Naskar (Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth)
I hated that, it made me think of how the Nazis had made the Jewish people wear stars on their clothes, before Winston Churchill and Harry Truman flew through the line of enemy powered individuals in Berlin and took down Hitler with their combined powers of Lord Britain and Uncle Sam.
Erik Schubach (Emily Monroe Is Not The Chosen One: The Complete Anthology)
Generation Z wants their calling to be unique to them. Stanford Researcher Roberta Katz analyzed millions of snippets of Gen Z online speech in a project called iGen Corpus. One of her main discoveries is that Gen Z emphasizes finding unique identities.
Matthew Weiss (We Don't Want YOU, Uncle Sam: Examining the Military Recruiting Crisis with Generation Z)
[T]he most ennobling work we do is seldom remunerated in greenbacks. Bearing and raising a child, cultivating a garden, just being there for a sibling or friend to lean on: this “work” is compensated in a currency far more valuable than Uncle Sam’s paper. This, in fact, is the work that should be honored on Labor Day. The work we do for “nothing.” (For everything, really.) The work that enriches us as human beings; that binds us to our families and our neighbors; that shrouds even the most commonplace of lives in glory. This is the work whose coin, whose only coin, is love.
Bill Kauffmann
North suspected that even the Russian Czar was paying far less than Uncle Sam.
Edwin Black (IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation)
the St. Lawrence. They're working now in the neighborhood of Huntington, Canada, and the dividing line between the British possessions and New York State, runs along solid ground there. It's a wild and desolate part of country, too, and I haven't many men up there.
Victor Appleton (Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight; or, on the border for Uncle Sam)
Don't worry, father. I'm not going far this time. Only to the Canadian border, and that's only a few hundred miles. But I want to see if I can cut the current off, and turn it on again. When a thing happens by accident you never know whether you can get just exactly the same conditions again." Tom shut off the current from the dynamo, and the powerful beam of light died out. Then he turned it on once more, and it glowed as brightly as before. He did this several times, and each time it was a success. "Hurrah!" cried Tom. "To-morrow I'll start on my latest invention, a great searchlight!
Victor Appleton (Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight; or, on the border for Uncle Sam)
lots of them. One was in the Eiffel Tower, during the Paris Exposition. I didn't see that, but I have read about it. Another is in one of the twin lighthouses at the Highlands, on the Atlantic coast of New Jersey, just above Asbury Park. That light is of ninety-five million candle power, and the lighthouse keeper there told me it was visible, on a clear night, as far as the New Haven, Connecticut, lighthouse, a distance of fifty miles.
Victor Appleton (Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight; or, on the border for Uncle Sam)