“The keynote of American civilization is a sort of warm-hearted vulgarity. The Americans have none of the irony of the English, none of their cool poise, none of their manner. But they do have friendliness. Where an Englishman would give you his card, an American would very likely give you his shirt.”
Raymond Chandler
“Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business.”
William S. Burroughs
“Argument are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.”
Oscar Wilde
“Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own, as their representative American, someone who actually embodies all of those qualities [Michael Moore].”
Christopher Hitchens
“There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined”
Mark Twain
“The capacity to be intrinsic and vulgar is American.”
Stan Brakhage
“Vulgarized knowledge characteristically gives birth to a feeling that everything is understandable and explained. It is like a system of bridges built over chasms. One can travel boldly ahead over these bridges, ignoring the chasms. It is forbidden to look down into them; but that, alas, does not alter the fact that they exist.”
Czeslaw Milosz
