AMERICA QUOTES VI
quotations about America
America can restore its strengths as the world-respected land of opportunity by returning to open-society principles. An open society invests in people and new ideas, rewards talent and hard work, values dialogue and learns from dissent, operates to high standards with transparent information, looks for common ground, sees problems as opportunities for creative change, and encourages those who are fortunate to help others get the same chance, because service is the highest ideal. With such standards in mind, America the Beautiful can return to its admired role as America the Principled.
ROSABETH MOSS KANTER
America the Principled
America: It's like Britain, only with buttons.
RINGO STARR
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Great British Humor
Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that's slightly below the average across all advanced economies.
PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, Oct. 8, 2009
America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.
OSCAR WILDE
The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde
America is a nation of underdogs.
MARCO RUBIO
"For Marco Rubio, Is It Too Late to Be the Underdog?", ABC News, March 7, 2016
We have no desire to be the world's policeman. But America does want to be the world's peacemaker.
JIMMY CARTER
State of the Union Address, Jan. 25, 1979
You look out right now at the presidential contests and the startling, dismaying probabilities, and it's hard not to wonder if something dramatically wrong isn't happening to America. It is. Too many things are falling apart. Trust has disappeared. The white working class is in agony. Family dissolution is a fact of life. The economy is poking along. The debt is racing along. And now we have a political reality show.
JAY AMBROSE
"Much of America is falling apart", Ventura County Star, March 4, 2016
American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Character and Opinion in the United States
The American Dream means giving it your all, trying your hardest, accomplishing something. And then I'd add to that, giving something back. No definition of a successful life can do anything but include serving others.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
interview, Academy of Achievement, Jun. 2, 1995
That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
GEORGE CARLIN
standup routine
That is the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles. That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. That we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe or hiring somebody's son. That we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted -- or at least, most of the time.
BARACK OBAMA
speech at 2004 Democratic Convention
America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.
AYN RAND
Capitalism: The Unknown Deal
Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it, "all men are created equal except negroes." When the Know-nothings get control, it will read, "all men are created equal except negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to Joshua F. Speed, Aug. 24, 1855
What Americans should by now be able to see is that neither the laissez-faire marketplace nor strong government has given them a satisfying or permanent resolution. The problem is not the marketplace and it is not government. The problem originates in the contest of clashing values between society and capitalism and, since this human society cannot surrender its deepest values, it must try to alter capitalism's. As we look deeper for the soul of capitalism, we find that, in the terms of ordinary human existence, American capitalism doesn't appear to have one.
WILLIAM GREIDER
The Soul of Capitalism
We should keep steadily before our minds the fact that Americanism is a question of principle, of purpose, of idealism, of character; that it is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
speech at the unveiling of the monument to General Sheridan, Nov. 25, 1908
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
OSCAR WILDE
attributed, Hating America: A History
I sometimes think that the American story is the one about the reading of the will.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Money and Class in America
If we have learned anything in the past ten years, it is that these lovely things about America were never lovely. We have been expansionist and aggressive and mean to other people from the beginning. And we've been aggressive and mean to people in this country, and we've allocated the wealth of this country in a very unjust way. We've never had justice in our courts for the poor people, for black people, for radicals. Now how can we boast that America is a very special place? It's not that special. It really isn't.
HOWARD ZINN
Voices of a People's History of the United States
I know this about the American people: We welcome competition. We'll match our ingenuity, our energy, our experience and technology, our spirit and enterprise against anyone.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 1990
America has been the New World in all tongues, to all peoples, not because this continent was a new-found land, but because all those who came here believed they could create upon this continent a new life -- a life that should be new in freedom.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Third Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1941