Non Fiction Authors From The United States

"Change your thoughts and you can change the world."

"If you put off everything till you're sure of it, you'll get nothing done."

"Happiness will never come if it's a goal in itself; happiness is a by-product of a commitment to worthy causes."

"People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success."

"Believe that problems do have answers. Believe that they can be overcome. Believe that they can be handled. And finally, believe that you can solve them."

"Who is God? Some theological being? He is so much greater than theology. God is vitality. God is life. God is energy. As you breathe God in, as you visualize His energy, you will be reenergized!"

"Optimism is a philosophy based on the belief that basically life is good, that, in the long run, the good in life overbalances the evil."

"When obstacles or difficulties arise, the positive thinker takes them as creative opportunities. He welcomes the challenge of a tough problem and looks for ways to turn it to advantage."

"Our problem is to become acquainted with our own selves, letting our personalities loose upon the world for the sheer adventure of their full development and in the positive hope that they may in their own way lift the level of humanity."

"It's not necessary to be born again. You have your way to God, I have mine. I found eternal peace in a Shinto shrine … I've been to Shinto shrines and God is everywhere. … Christ is one of the ways! God is everywhere."

"Every human being is a child of God and has more good in him than evil — but circumstances and associates can step up the bad and reduce the good. I've got great faith in the essential fairness and decency — you may say goodness — of the human being."

"Faced with the election of a Catholic, our culture is at stake."

"In a large congregation, while there is a wide diversification of interest, it is also true that there are only a few basic human problems. It must also be taken into consideration that people are people regardless of who they are or what their backgrounds may be. There are certain deep universal appeals to human interest and to these human nature always responds."

"A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you."

"It is likely that well before Clark took his bizarre positions in support of highly repressive, violent, and intolerant political systems and their leaders, he came to the conclusion that the United States was the most dangerous and reprehensible source of evil in the world. This overarching belief led to the reflexive sympathy and support for all the enemies and alleged victims of the United States. They include dictators of different ideological persuasion noted above, whose inhumane qualities and policies Clark was unable to discern or acknowledge, let alone condemn. It was sufficient for Clark's moral accounting that if these dictators were opposed to (and allegedly victimized by) the United States, they deserved and earned his sympathy.""

"Mr. Clark often told voters what they did not want to hear. He advocated gun control legislation in speeches to hunters and told defense industry workers that their plants should be closed... Mr. Clark was the author or co-author of several books, including “The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf” (1992) and “The Torturer in the Mirror” (2010)... He was also one of the most quotable public figures of his generation, many of his pronouncements tending toward aphoris.."

"Ramsey Clark, who championed civil rights and liberties as attorney general in the Johnson administration, then devoted much of the rest of his life to defending unpopular causes... died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 93... Mr. Clark... shunned a government limousine in favor of his own beat-up Oldsmobile, set an ambitiously liberal course as attorney general.. He filed the first lawsuit to force a school district — Dale County, Ala. — to desegregate or else lose its federal school aid. He went on to file the first voting rights and school desegregation suits in the North.... He oversaw the drafting of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1968 — better known as the Fair Housing Act — which addressed housing discrimination... Mr. Clark went into private legal practice and soon devoted more and more of his time to representing the disadvantaged and the unpopular, including Alaskan Natives, war resisters, rioters at the Attica prison in New York State and Lyndon LaRouche... In 1972...Mr. Clark... publicly criticized American conduct of the [Vietnam] war. ... In 2011, he condemned NATO’s bombing campaign against Qaddafi’s government. In 2013, he said Iran had no intention of building a nuclear bomb and denounced sanctions against that country. Later, he protested lethal attacks by unmanned American drone aircraft on other nations... In 2008, the United Nations General Assembly awarded Mr. Clark its Prize in the Field of Human Rights, which it gives every five years to human rights defenders."

"I think we're destroying higher education by making it high-tech rather than high-humanity. What we need to do is realize that we now have the capacity to produce more than we need with fewer and fewer people working at it. We need to spend more time on the humanitarian side of how we live together in peace, how we learn to love each other, how we benefit from studying different cultures and different histories, and enriching ourselves as individuals that way, rather than just pressing for money and fame... It's a dead-end road that will destroy us. We don't need all those jobs, you know. We need to build a public throughout the world that has a better understanding of fundamental values, and history, and culture, and not in high-tech manufacturing of unnecessary necessities."

"He (Saddam) had this huge war going on, and you have to act firmly when you have an assassination attempt."

"There can't be any more Fallujahs. Fallujah is the 21st century equivalent of Guernica. We just went in and destroyed that city, drove the people out, killed them, thousands. We don't know how many."

"The world is the most dangerous place it's ever been now because of what our country has done, and is doing, and we have to take it back."

"Abu Ghraib is unbelievable in the innocent times of 1961, that we would torture people that way, and on the instructions of the president of the United States and his highest legal advisers. “Torture is OK,” they said. “Go for it, fellas.” If we can’t renounce that and remove it from office, then the Constitution doesn’t work anymore... We’ve got to do more than take back the Constitution. There has to be accountability for what’s happened. The Constitution says that the president, vice president and other officials of the United States shall be removed from office upon impeachment for and conviction of high crimes and misdemeanors.... If you care about the Constitution, you better start talking to your member of the House of Representatives and say impeachment now is essential to the integrity of the United States government and to the future of the United States. We’ve had more than 500,000 people sign on “Vote to Impeach.” We need to get 5 million, and we need to get 5 million on there quick. And then the Congress will react."

"You know, the Nuremberg Tribunal called the war of aggression the supreme international crime, and it is. And George W. Bush has waged a war of aggression against Iraq. He’s killed more than 100,000 people. Are their lives worth nothing? Can we have a moment of silence in memory of all the people who have died in Iraq because of the criminal acts of George W. Bush in waging this war of aggression? Every moment of their lives is fraught with danger right now because of us. The world is the most dangerous place it’s ever been now because of what our country has done, and is doing, and we have to take it back. We can’t wait four more years. There can’t be any more Fallujahs. Fallujah is the 21st century equivalent of Guernica. We just went in and destroyed that city, drove the people out, killed them, thousands. We don’t know how many. They won’t even bother to count who’s been killed or how many, or estimate how many. They just keep killing. Almost every day we’re reading about another checkpoint where some family got wiped out because they didn’t do what they were supposed to do, according to the military there."

"American aggression had already created incalculable levels of “misery for the world”; that “the poor of the planet made poorer, dominated and exploited by the foreign policies of the U.S. and its rich allies;” that “the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a war of aggression, an offense called ‘the supreme international crime’ in the Nuremberg Judgment."

"What is to be said of leaders with the mental acuity and moral perceptions revealed by these disclosed words and deeds? They are at best enemies of life without understanding. Psychologically, they disconnect all feeling for the beauty of the planet — a rose, an impala in motion, a baby’s hand, a Confucian analect, a Bach cantata, a parable of Jesus, pilgrims bathing in the Ganges, a crowd watching a soccer game in Rio, the subway in Moscow, the skyline in Manhattan. They cannot think or feel about the human meaning of what they do.,, A single Trident II submarine can inflict more death than all prior wars in history. Twenty-four missiles, launched while submerged, each with seventeen independently targeted, maneuverable nuclear warheads five times more powerful than the atom bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, can travel 5,000 nautical miles to strike within 300 feet of 408 predetermined targets. Nuclear winter might follow even if no other weapons are used. No nation or individual can be permitted to possess the power to destroy the world. An imperative need is for an informed and active public struggling for its right to survive. Public ignorance and apathy is “as much a concern for survival of the species as the unthinkable power to destroy the world wielded by a few men in a mindless manner”"

"The consistent underlying psychology of the United States, which has held the lead in nuclear war capability and capacity throughout these 40 [now 75] years, should be understandable to anyone who has ever known a violent neighborhood bully. The government of Americans means to have its way through the use and threatened to use of superior force. It will lie. It will deceive. It will kill. It will escalate the threat and use of force to the highest level it dares. It will bluff, dangerous as that can be. It will do whatever is must to dominate. It does this in the face of the fact that its very preparation for a nuclear war may destroy all life. American war planners busily devised strategies for crippling the Soviet Union with revealing names like BROILER, FROLIC, SIZZLE, SHAKEDOWN, DROPSHOT, and VULTURE. The number of Soviet targets to be destroyed grew in number from 20 cities in December 1945 to 200 cities in 1949 and to 3261 total targets by 1957. The number of times the use of nuclear weapons has been contemplated by Americans is unbearable."

"A great many people in this country are worried about law-and-order. And a great many people are worried about justice. But one thing is certain: You cannot have either until you have both."

"There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals."

"The measure of your quality as a public person, as a citizen, is the gap between what you do and what you say."

"I think if I have one message, one thing before I die that most of the world would know, it would be that the event does not determine how to respond to the event. That is a purely personal matter. The way in which we respond will direct and influence the event more than the event itself."

"We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth."

"To all my friends, colleagues and family: I send you love. Please support me in my passage to a new life. I have no other way to thank you than this. You have all played a significant part in my development of loving. As a result, my life has been rich and full, so I leave feeling very grateful."

"I have often thought had there been somebody like me around, something might have been able to be done. I also think I don't see how I could have done what I've done in the world had I been married. And when I decided-because I've been on the verge of marriage many times-I said no, because if I wanted to roam the globe like I did, it wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to me, it wouldn't be fair to the people. At the point, I really feel it was a kind of destiny because I've been able to get to places. There are some people in the world who have other jobs to do."

"I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen, heard, understood and touched by them. The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understand and touch another person. When this is done, I feel contact has been made."

"A growing body of clinical observation has pointed to the conclusion that the family therapy must be oriented to the family as a whole."

"Why Family Therapy?...because it deals with family pain."

"Life is not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."

"We [Americans] choose not to understand the world on terms other than our own."

"Peering through his field glasses, George Custer saw all that he needed to see. He turned to his brother, the privileged lieutenant, and to his senior staff men. "What do you say? Shall we give those poor devils a good thrashing?""

"As Hancock issued the order to Mott to move his division up onto White Oak Road, a cavalcade appeared behind his trail brigade. "Better hold off," Hancock told the division commander. "See what the hell they want. Just get de Trobriand placed. Then come back." His leg scourged him doubly. He almost felt like pounding his thigh with his fists, to beat out the pus and hammer the pain to death. Preceded by outriders, Grant and Meade came cantering side by side, trailed by more flags than a Fourth of July celebration in Philadelphia. Behind the banners, enough well-mounted cavalrymen followed to be put to good use, had they not been retained to serve as palace guards. Their uniforms were mud-clotted now, to the delight of troopers less fortunate."

"Rud Hayes watched his division dissolve. What little he could see of it, anyway. He had just assured Kitching, an insolent young colonel newly attached, that his men would hold against any Reb assault, when thousands of screaming Johnnies had burst from the fog behind his left flank. Stunned, the one brigade he had managed to get into line buckled, then broke and disintegrated. Now he rode among swirls of air made visible, alternately ordering and begging his men to rally. Of all the brave soldiers he had led through three years of battles, few heeded him now."

"We know how to deal with apocalyptic blood-thirsty fanatics. We have two thousand years of historical examples in various religions of these death cults exploding out of the mainstream religion. And in two thousand years there is not a single example of these wildfire death cults being put down without extreme violence. Not a single example. But the Obama Administration doesn't know history, they don't want to know history, they don't want to deal with reality. And the reality is: That the way you deal with Islamic State - these blood-thirsty, blood-drunken terrorists - is to kill them, keep on killing them until you kill the last one, then you kill his pet goat! That's how you deal with them."

"A mighty burst of rain assaulted the canvas, conjuring Gettysburg: his hour of glory, of triumph. The smoke, confusion, and carnage had calmed to reveal his army victorious. Lee had been defeated. Lee! His elation on that July afternoon had soared beyond all words, beyond his deathly exhaustion, and he had thought, mistakenly, that all might be well thereafter. Only to spend the night wrapped in an oilcloth, sitting on a rock amid the mud, under a tree that channeled the rain into torrents. Every roof had been required for the wounded his victory cost. The wounded, in their legions. Damn Washington, and damn the New York papers. None of the men in frock coats and cravats understood the human side of an army. How they had howled- and were howling still- because he had not chased Lee like an ill-trained dog. They refused to hear that three hard days of battle had left tens of thousands of wounded men in his care and thousands more as prisoners in his hands. They did not want to hear that his army, too, had been mauled and thrown into confusion, that officers had been slaughtered by the hundredfold, that ammunition pouches and caissons had been emptied, that entire divisions had nothing to eat and no water untainted by blood, that the corpses of the brave baked in the sun, or simply that he had done the best he could. The Army of the Potomac had worked a miracle, sending Lee home in shame, but it had not been wonder enough for the stay-at-homes."

"He had to do the honorable thing, he understood that. Today of all days, it was vital to remain a gentleman, to speak faithfully and betray no emotions to his career's executioner. His family seemed ever destined for disappointment: his father, now him. Yet, he had done much, giving them all the victory they needed, that victory and more... Only to have a low cabal poison Lincoln against him. Liars. Devils. Whoremongers. Intimating, in the wake of Mine Run, that he sympathized with the Confederacy, that he was unfit to command, even that he was cowardly. All because he would not squander thousands of men to no purpose. Oh, yes. Had he overruled all military judgment, common sense, and decency and ordered Warren to attack, had he sacrificed five thousand soldiers in an act of folly, he might have been forgiven. But powerful men never spotted near a battlefield had seized upon his refusal to charge Lee's entrenchments, coiling like snakes to strike his reputation. Their ardor for slaughter repelled him. Perhaps he was better off being relieved. He could put this filth behind him, this infinite human vice of cold ambition. He could not understand how men could tell a public lie and then stand by it. He was not made for the politics of command, not for politics of any kind. He knew that his notions of honor seemed quaint, even laughable, to the likes of Sickles, Hooker, and Butterfield. But he could not imagine a life lived another way."

"To the flesh-and-blood men who struggled, before we turned them into bronze and marble."

"In the sour air of his tent, Meade viewed himself with an engineer's cold eye: too dark of thought, too dour, a man alert to the smell of sulfur, but not to Heaven's scent. His wife was a proud, loyal woman, of good family. He could hear Margaret teasing. "George, I know you can smile!" She had got him a brigadier's rank at the start of the war, when his merits had not sufficed. He would have to do his best for her. And for the Union, of course. Major General George Gordon Meade had been happiest building lighthouses."

"Faced with opponents who sacrifice the innocent to their god, our generals study atheist guerrillas. To cope with fanatical killers with global ambitions, we turn to courts of law intended for common criminals. Pirates terrorize shipping lanes, while we wring our hands over their legal status. And all parties on the Potomac still insist that stability can be assured by supporting tyrants and that infernally corrupt governments are bound to reform if only we treat them respectfully. We mouth admirable principles for which we won't lift a finger. If we must be hypocrites, we should at least apply some intelligence to the task."

"To study what men have done is to see ourselves as we are: History's mirror disintegrates our makeup. With its casualty lists, litany of atrocities, and suggestions that heroism, too, may require violence, history shows us "the skull beneath the skin." And no matter how firmly we shut our eyes, the skull will still be there."

"They moved up between black trees, trip-me stumps, and small boulders. Everything in this world seemed disordered, messed up. Crazy people. Who started all this. For what? The nuclear blast hadn't reached his hood in East L.A. But the radiation did. He'd been on Okinawa. His family had been home. Now the Jihadis were going to get their shit handed to them."

"To those who solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."