"Whatever you think about the Vietnam War, America wasn't stealing from the Vietnamese. And in Iraq, we spent a whole bunch of money and then we turned over the oil fields to the Iraqis. Under the conquest ethic, we would have kept it. In Afghanistan after 9/11, the US military, even while bombing terrorist targets, was delivering food rations to Afghan civilians. And far from stealing, America rebuilt Germany and Japan after World War II. Contrary to the Zinn narrative, we're not the bad guys of the world. As Colin Powell said, "The only land that America asks for abroad is land to bury our dead.""

"So is the wealth of America based on theft? Actually, no. The wealth of America isn't stolen, it's created. The ethic of conquest is universal. What's uniquely American is the alternative: equal rights, self-determination and wealth creation. If America did not exist, the conquest ethic would dominate the world once again. America isn't the problem. America is the answer."

"I love America. I chose this country. And like millions of immigrants, I've been blessed by my life in America. This country does something truly unique. It allows you to write the script of your own life."

"These are the indictments against America: We stole the country from the Native Americans. We took half of Mexico in the Mexican War. We stole the labor of the African Americans. And today our foreign policy and our free market system are forms of theft. These indictments developed separately and each has been around for a long time. But now they've come together in a single narrative of American shame. [...] Are our lives, innocent on the surface, part of a ruthless engine of looting, exploitation and murder? It's a powerful critique. We can't just dismiss it with chants of liberty, freedom, rah, rah, rah. The critics are raising the primary question of justice. Read the Declaration of Independence. It's a cry against injustice. For the American Founders, liberty was the solution to that injustice. This is not just an attack on the 1%. It's an attack on all of us. We are a nation of immigrants and settlers. And we are the ones accused of these crimes. [...] If our wealth is stolen, then we must give it back. So, is America guilty as charged? It depends on whether the story of American shame is true or not."

"And how badly we need right now a Washington, a Lincoln, a Reagan. Well, we don't have them. But we do have us."

"Most countries are founded in conquest. Europe, conquest, conquest and more conquest. Look at Britain. Before becoming an empire, it was conquered by the Norman kings of France and earlier by the Romans. Before the British came, India was invaded by the Persians, the Mongols, the Afghans, the Arabs and Alexander the Great. Conquest was how wealth was acquired. Not through entrepreneurship, invention or business. Historically, every culture has despised entrepreneurs and merchants. In India, we have the caste system. Who's at the top? The Brahmin or priest. The entrepreneur is one step from the bottom. The Islamic historian Ibn Khaldūn says that looting is morally preferable to entrepreneurship or trade. Why? Because looting is more manly. In looting, you have to beat the guy in open combat to take his stuff. America is based on a different idea. The idea of acquiring wealth not by taking it from someone else. Instead, wealth can be created through innovation, entrepreneurship and trade. Let's take a look at Manhattan. Reportedly in 1626, Native Americans sold Manhattan to the Dutch for $700 in today's money. There's land all over the world now that you can buy for $700. But when the Dutch bought Manhattan, there was no Manhattan. Prices are astronomical today because of what's been built over the past 300 years. Manhattan is the creation of the people who built it, not the original inhabitants who sold it. Manhattan represents the new American ethic of wealth creation. An alternative to conquest."

"Imagine the unimaginable... What would the world look like if America did not exist?"

"america has a problem"

"Slavery existed all over the world. The Egyptians had slaves. The Chinese had slaves. The Africans did. American Indians had slaves long before Columbus. And tragically, slavery continues today in many countries. What's uniquely Western is the abolition of slavery. And what's uniquely American is the fighting of a great war to end it."

"Land possession is part of a long history in which the stronger Native American tribes displaced weaker ones. The Native Americans, too, subscribe to the conquest ethic. But what about the charge of genocide? In the two centuries after Columbus, the Native American population declined by 80%. But it wasn't due to warfare. Rather, as historian William McNeill points out, they contracted diseases, measles, typhus, smallpox, cholera and malaria, to which they had no immunities. Now, this is tragedy on a grand scale, but it's not genocide because genocide implies an intention to wipe out a people. Just a century and a half earlier, one-third of the population of Europe was wiped out by a series of bubonic and pneumonic plagues. Those plagues came from Asia, and the Europeans had no immunities. We don't call that genocide."

"For the first time in history, a great war was fought to end slavery. 300,000 Northern soldiers died in that war. They died to secure for the slaves a freedom that the slaves were not in the position to secure for themselves. Even the Civil Rights Movement was not a break with the American founding. [...] Where did Martin Luther King get his 'promissory note'? Not from the segregationists. He got it from the Declaration of Independence. It was the American founding that established the principles that made possible the success of the Civil Rights Movement."

"Did America steal the country from the Native Americans? Much of this critique focuses on Columbus and the actions of the Spanish conquistadors. But Columbus never even landed in America. And the actions of the Spanish, that was 150 years before America."

"The topic of race, more than any other, generates taboos. And taboos are the enemy of history and of truth. In the early 17th century when slavery started in America, another group was brought to this country by force. They were white indentured servants. Starting in 1618, children were captured from the streets of London and sold into colonial America. But it didn't stop there. Over the next century and a half, another 150,000 Irish men, women and children were declared soldiers of war by Britain and sold into colonial indentured servitude with many landing in Virginia and New England. Indentured servitude was not slavery. It didn't have the same ideology of racial dehumanization. And it was for a limited period, typically seven years. Yet, these people often had their term extended or died before they got their freedom. Indentured servants worked side by side with slaves. For many years, white indentured servants outnumbered black slaves."

"Gates and other scholars estimate that in the period before the Civil War, there were approximately 3,500 free blacks who owned more than 10,000 black slaves. In South Carolina and Louisiana, Gates points out, the percentage of free blacks who owned slaves was approximately the same as the percentage of whites who owned slaves."

"The world could be a pretty scary place in 2016... Israel brought to its knees, the Muslim world united. But America would still be a rich country. How does Obama change that? How does he restore the world before colonialism? Actually, there is a way, and it's a beautiful way. I call it "debt as a weapon of mass destruction.""

"The first time, we did not know what change would look like. Now we do. The first time, we did not know Barack Obama. Now we do. Which dream will we carry into 2016? The American dream or Obama's dream? The future is not in my hands. It's not even in Obama's hands. The future is in your hands."

"Only through the dreams of Obama's father can we understand the actions of the son."

"[Obama] resolves not to be like his father, but to take his dream. Where the father failed, he will succeed. In doing so, perhaps he can become worthy of his father's love, the love he never got."

"[Obama] is then chosen as the fulfillment of the Civil Rights Movement. This insecure kid who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, whose life is shaped by his father's ghost, and whose ideology could not be more directly remote from what Americans believe or care about, is now the President of the United States."

"We are all shaped by our pasts. And we carry elements of the past into the future. But nothing can threaten the future quite as much as the debts of the past."

"When I was a kid, I would sit on the floor of my house in Mumbai and I would read about the great nations, the great empires. The Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire... they all came and they all went. But I always thought there was one exception to that rule, and that's the United States of America, which is a different kind of empire, if it's an empire at all. It's an empire of ideals."

"Obama himself gives us a big clue in the title of his autobiography. Notice it says "Dreams from My Father", not "Dreams of My Father"."

"A thesis-level course in the history, derivation and proper use of every sailor's favorite cuss, the movie has to wage a constant battle against potty-mouthed monotony. Fortunately, it emerges largely unscathed, and almost triumphant in its own single-minded way."

"Mr. Anderson’s movie is staged as a talking-head culture-war skirmish between embattled upholders of propriety (or repression, if you prefer) and proponents of free expression (or filth), but its real lesson is that the two sides depend upon each other. Or rather, that the continued vitality of the word — its unique ability to convey emphasis, relieve stress, shock grown-ups and function as adverb, noun, verb, intensifier and what linguists call 'infix' — rests on its ability to mark an edge between the permissible and the profane."

"Unlike Kirby Dick's scatterbrained This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Steve Anderson's similar state-of-obscenity documentary Fuck gives both sides of the decency argument a fair hearing."

"The documentary offers an effervescent blend of cultural history and political opinion."

"Can you support the First Amendment, and be appalled at the often-ridiculous fines levied by the FCC for a single broadcast F-bomb, and still be weary of this word's ubiquity? Anderson's movie doesn't say, but many know the answer."

"Anderson's glib approach is to the movie's advantage, allowing anything profound to seem unexpected."

"Fuck provides a highly provocative and humorous overview of a word that, love it or hate it, undoubtedly holds more power than its measly four letters might suggest."

"All in all, I’d have to say that this film was entertaining as fuck."

"At the forefront of the discussion is the question of freedom of speech."

"For something rather different there’s F*ck, a moderately amusing documentary about the second most offensive word in the English language."

"All told, Anderson's film is surprisingly amusing, as well as insightful, even if viewers have to sit through about 800 uses of the word in the 90-minute film. (And that's a cinematic record.)"

"The most important film using fuck."

"It's the ultimate bad word."

"The f-word is special. Everybody uses the word breakfast, but not everyone feels comfortable using the word fuck so there's an extra power behind it."

"It's one of those all-purpose words."

"You could think of that [word] as standing in for most of the changes that happened in the 20th century, at least many of the important ones."

"If you can't say fuck, you can't say fuck the government."

"Ultimately, Fuck is a movie about free speech. ... Freedom of expression must extend to words that offend. Love it or hate it, fuck is here to stay."

"[Fuck] sounds exactly like what it is."

"An interesting debate about censorship."

"F*ck manages to strip some of the mystique from the forbidden word, and in the end, despite some road bumps, is a satisfying f*lm."

""The rail is so low, a 7-year-old can climb over it." — director Eric Steel."

""And this woman, she came up to me, and she said, in a German accent… "Will you take my picture?" I was like, "Your picture? Woman, I'm going to kill myself… Can't you see the tears pouring down of my face?" — Jumper Kevin Hines, who survived the jump in 2000."

""I'll never be able to sort of drive across bridge again without...some kind of...emotional reaction. Something else I'm pissed off at him about. Such a great bridge." — Gordon Smith, roomate of David Paige, who jumped April 28, 2004."

""Why he chose the Bridge? I don't know… Maybe he just wanted to fly one time." — Caroline Pressley, friend of Gene Sprague, whose suicide is shown last in the film."

""He walked across the bridge from the south to the north side and then from north to south, which are typically tourists. I did not think the bridge jump, but it must have something about him that caught my attention." — director Eric Steel of Gene Sprague."

"So I did it. I got in the car for the final ride to the airport. And as I was riding, I felt like I was going to the gallows. I couldn't believe it. Why was I doing this? Why did I feel, mainly, why did I feel so inflated. I'd been there eight weeks, I'd worked eight days. Was waiting that difficult? I felt all puffed up, but on the way, I felt, my God, I will never see a little piece of heaven like this again. This is the end. And as I was riding, I said a silent benediction, a silent farewell to all that I had had and would miss. Farewell, to the fantastic breakfasts, free every morning. You walked down and there they are waiting on you with the papaya, mango, and pineapple like I'd never tasted before. Farewell, to the Thai maids with the king-sized cotton sheets and the big king-sized beds. Farewell, to the lunches. Fresh meat flown in from America, daily. Roast potatoes, green beans and roast lamb, at 110 degrees under a circus tent, according to British Equity. Farewell to the drivers with the tinted glasses and the Mercedes with the tinted windows. Farewell to the cakes, and teas and ices every day exactly at four o'clock. Farewell to those beautiful smiling people. Farewell to that single, fresh rose in a vase on my bureau in the hotel every day. And just as I was climbing into that first-class seat, and wrapping myself in a blanket, just as I was adjusting the pillow from behind my head, and having a sip of that champagne, and just as I was adjusting and bringing down my Thai purple sleep mask, I had an inkling, I had a flash. I suddenly thought I knew what it was that had killed Marilyn Monroe."

"[as Athol Fugard] Spalding! The sea's a lovely lady when you play in her. But if you play with her, she's a BITCH! Play in the sea, yes, but never play with her. You're lucky to be here! You're lucky to be ALIVE!"