I mentioned that one of the tripartite formulas in American worldview involves time: past, present, and future.

They do not merely collect texts; they must also gather data about the context and the informant and, above all, write an analysis of the items based upon the course readings and lecture material on folklore theory and method.

Life, it seems, is nothing if not a series of initiations, transitions, and incorporations.

Americans have a penchant for the future and tend to disregard the past.

Americans often have trouble enjoying the present moment.

My academic identity is that of a folklorist, and for many years I have taught only folklore courses.

There is more to folklore research than fieldwork. This is why in all of my other upper-division courses I require a term paper involving original research.

Americans do believe in progress and there is almost certainly a kernel of truth in the joke.

In my introductory course, Anthropology 160, the Forms of Folklore, I try to show the students what the major and minor genres of folklore are, and how they can be analyzed.

If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars, he or she should learn something about fieldwork, something about bibliography, something about how to carry out library research, and something about how to publish that research.

I mentioned that one of the tripartite formulas in American worldview involves time: past, present, and future.

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

The class has become over the years fairly large, running to three hundred or more, but I always insist upon reading all the student folklore collections myself. Although this is a tall order, I look forward to it because I learn so much from it.

Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents.

In the light of our culture, these are not unreasonable questions and tactics, but if once again, we try to see the lens through which we look, we can see that there is far too great an emphasis placed on the future.

Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life.

Future orientation is combined with a notion and expectation of progress, and nothing is impossible.

Polls are frequently taken to try to tease out or determine likely directions and trends, but once taken, they belong to the past, requiring that new polls be taken.

I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions.

Their term project consists of a fieldwork collection of folklore that they create by interviewing family members, friends, or anyone they can manage to persuade to serve as an informant.

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

Under current law volunteers who are not working with an official nonprofit organization are not covered by the Volunteer Protection Act. Therefore, there are absolutely no legal protections for the average American who wishes to volunteer.

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris, like Alien had a lot of things that are similar, although it's also got the horror element.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

The generic Canadian style of illustration is different from the generic American style.

But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people.

And while the U.S. can never be 100 percent safe from a future strike, our government is working around the clock on measures to protect the American people.

All we're getting from the Democratic majority in Congress and from this White House is more bailouts, more spending, more planned stimulus, more deficits and debt, and the American people have had it.

Who cares about that stuff? This is America, not Jerusalem. I'm an American. Let Harry be a Jew.

The greatest public health threat for many American women is the men they live with.

The belief that the good in American society will finally win out... I don't believe any more.

I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I've done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?

But the Congress has made the determination that certain kinds of information can be protected even though the American people may want to have access to information.

No one will burn out doing aerobic running. It is too much anaerobic running, which the American scholastic athletic system tends to put young athletes through, that burns them out.

I was on TV for almost sixteen weeks during American Idol. It's at the point now where it's old.

What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table. And then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices.

I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican-I'm an American, I'm a human.

Long after this wonderful event in the Earth's history, when the human species was spread over a good deal of Asia, Europe, and Africa, migration to the American continents began in attempts to find new feeding grounds and unoccupied areas for hunting and fishing.

The time has come for the American government to recognize the damage that has occurred to our economy, and to take firm action to curtail what I believe is both unfair and illegal foreign competition.

The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.

We in this Congress have a choice. The American people have a right to exercise a choice on this issue, as to whether our men and women will continue to fight and die in a war based on deception and fantasy, or to start bringing the troops home.

American and Israel share a special bond. Our relationship is unique among all nations. Like America, Israel is a strong democracy, a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty, a home to the oppressed and persecuted.

To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way.

There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is.

When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way.

I mean, the reality is unemployment today - over 14 million Americans are unemployed. That's exactly what it was a year ago. I mean, this - the American people know we can't borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing economy.

I was very pleased you know, and I was afraid that I might stick out, but I didn't. My happiest thing about that picture is that I proved that American actors can speak as well and also fit in with an ensemble like that.