It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits. – Greil Marcus
Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering, when the country fails to live up to its promises, or actively betrays them. – Greil Marcus
It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths. – Greil Marcus
No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes. – Greil Marcus
…existence has become an unreasoning, wild dance around the golden calf, a mad worship of God Mammon. In that dance and in that worship man has sacrificed all his finer qualities of the heart and soul — kindness and justice, honor and manhood, compassion and sympathy with his fellowman. – Alexander Berkman, What Is Communist Anarchism?