AMERICA QUOTES III

quotations about America

America quote

I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum.

WYNDHAM LEWIS

"The Case Against Roots", America and Cosmic Man

Tags: Wyndham Lewis


American's greatest deficit is no longer found in the federal budget. It is a moral deficit, and it may be found in a polluted and poisoned culture that has become the great enemy within.

PAT BUCHANAN

speech, Mar. 2, 1999

Tags: culture


America needs to be a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons.

GEORGE H. W. BUSH

Tags: George H. W. Bush


I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. The turkey is a much more respectable bird.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

letter to Sarah Bache, Jan. 26, 1784

Tags: Benjamin Franklin


The English Constitution, in a word, is framed on the principle of choosing a single sovereign authority, and making it good; the American, upon the principle of having many sovereign authorities, and hoping that their multitude may atone for their inferiority.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: Walter Bagehot


The English Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but America, they were building.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"New England Two Centuries Ago", The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose

Tags: James Russell Lowell


The chief business of the American people is business.

CALVIN COOLIDGE

speech, Jan. 17, 1925

Tags: Calvin Coolidge, business


We have no choice, we people of the United States, as to whether or not we shall play a great part in the world. That has been determined to us by fate, by the march of events. We have to play that part. All that we can decide is whether we shall play it well or ill.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

speech in San Francisco, California, May 13, 1903

Tags: Theodore Roosevelt, fate


Whether our ancestors came here on the Mayflower, on slave ships, whether they came to Ellis Island or LAX in Los Angeles, whether they came yesterday or walked this land a thousand years ago our great challenge for the 21st century is to find a way to be One America. We can meet all the other challenges if we can go forward as One America.

BILL CLINTON

State of the Union Address, Jan. 19, 1999

Tags: Bill Clinton


Deep in the heart of every American, I think there burns a flame. It's an inheritance from every generation of Americans that has come before us. That's why we have overcome every crisis we have ever faced before. It's what makes this nation so special, why we stand apart. That flame is not going to be extinguished in this moment. If our leadership does its part, the American people will do more than their part.

JOE BIDEN

speech on Coronavirus, March 23, 2020

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Of course, I must say that I don't think America is God's gift to anybody -- if it is, God's days have got to be numbered.

JAMES BALDWIN

If Beale Street Could Talk

Tags: James Baldwin


Some of us grew up in households, for example, hearing that America is always right and never makes a mistake in the world. Others of us grew up in families that were so critical of America that the country was always described as a bully or an oppressor. In both cases, if we want to grow up to be free, we will have to unlearn the simple half-truths we were taught and develop the discernment to decide for ourselves when America's actions at home and abroad are virtuous--and when they are not. Always praising America is not patriotism. It is idolatry. But always criticizing America is not patriotism, either. It is ingratitude. The former is blind to America's faults; the latter is blind to America's virtues.

MARK GERZON

The Reunited States of America: How We Can Bridge the Partisan Divide


Surely they knew that the very idea of the future came in an American box -- complete with instructions for assembling a Constitution, a MacDonald's hamburger franchise, a row of Marriot hotels and a First Amendment.

LEWIS H. LAPHAM

Money and Class in America

Tags: Lewis H. Lapham


The truth is, everything we know about America, everything Americans come to know about being American, isn't from the news. I live there. We don't go home at the end of the day and think, "Well, I really know who I am now because the Wall Street Journal says that the Stock Exchange closed at this many points." What we know about how to be who we are comes from stories. It comes from the novels, the movies, the fashion magazines. It comes from popular culture.

CHRIS ABANI

"Chris Abani on the stories of Africa", TED conference

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We must face the bitter fact that we have forsaken our great dream of a life of, for, and by the people; that the burning passions and ideals of the American dream lie congealed by cold cynicism. Great parts of the masses of our people no longer believe that they have a voice or a hand in shaping the destiny of this nation. They have not forsaken democracy because of any desire or positive action of their own; they have been driven down into the depths of a great despair born of frustration, hopelessness, and apathy. A democracy lacking in popular participation dies of paralysis.

SAUL ALINSKY

Reveille for Radicals

Tags: Saul Alinsky


We're entering our third century now, but it's wrong to judge our nation by its years. The calendar can't measure America because we were meant to be an endless experiment in freedom -- with no limit to our reaches, no boundaries to what we can do, no end point to our hopes. The United States Constitution is the impassioned and inspired vehicle by which we travel through history. It grew out of the most fundamental inspiration of our existence: that we are here to serve Him by living free -- that living free releases in us the noblest of impulses and the best of our abilities; that we would use these gifts for good and generous purposes and would secure them not just for ourselves and for our children but for all mankind.

RONALD REAGAN

State of the Union Address, Jan. 27, 1987

Tags: Ronald Reagan, freedom


America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

address to U.S. House of Representatives, Jul. 4, 1821

Tags: John Quincy Adams, mind


Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

GORE VIDAL

Screening History

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He is still trying to keep up with America, as it changes styles and costumes and vocabulary, as it dances ahead ever young, ever younger.

JOHN UPDIKE

Rabbit at Rest

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I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.

JOHN ADAMS

Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law, Boston Gazette, Aug. 1765

Tags: John Adams