America American Quotes & Sayings

Packed with fascinating personal perspective and testimony, Michael Takiffs A Complicated Man wholly justifies its title. The book is far more than a kaleidoscopic oral biography of President Bill Clinton. Aspect by aspect, it guides us through the struggles of postmodern America, as the most ambitious baby boomer of his generation seeks to modernize the Democratic Party-and, as in a Greek drama, is fated to be destroyed. Veritably, an all-American saga, with a cast of thousands-favorable and unfavorable. — Nigel Hamilton

In France, if you have any sort of talent, you'd better keep it here. And if you're going to go abroad, it had better not be America. The old battle - American versus Frog cinema. It's ridiculous. — Jean Reno

I feel like one of the things that is central to American life is the religious experience, and I think that the experience of being Muslim in America is as valid and as important a perspective on the religious experience of America as evangelical Christianity or Judaism - whatever it may be. — Ayad Akhtar

Shit, man, democracy failed before it started.

Who thought it was a good idea to let the masses of fucktards decide anything?

[Guess I've got more faith in people.]

People? The election of 2044 -- Curls Bellberry, a boy band presidency on the platform that the Earth is flat and that he'd nuke New York to save Social Security. There's a good reason he was the last president.

Problem with letting people pick a leader is they gravitate towards confident sociopaths no matter how stupid they are.

It's the perception of qualification that fools people.

At least by having corporate executives rule us we get folks who are good at business.

Life hurts, the world is fucked, and that's not going to change. . . — Rick Remender

All across America public libraries were, and are, being shut down, while prisons-with libraries-were, and are, being built. This has been a choice the American public has been making for over thirty years. — Avi Steinberg

My mom is American, so I was raised in her household in my formative years. But as I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family, my aunties, grandparents, is in Africa. — Nipsey Hussle

I found it marvelous that the great supporters of America in Europe are, of course, those countries that American consistency and firmness in the Cold War ended up liberating. — John Rhys-Davies

By far the biggest portion of a bushel of American commodity corn (about 60% of it, or some 50k kernels) goes to feeding livestock, and much of that goes to feeding America's 100 million beef cattle — Michael Pollan

Scripture says: "Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted." I call on every American family and the family of America to observe a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, honoring the memory of the thousands of victims of these brutal attacks and comforting those who lost loved ones. We will persevere through this national tragedy and personal loss. In time, we will find healing and recovery; and, in the face of all this evil, we remain strong and united, "one Nation under God." — George W. Bush

I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time [his grandchildren are] my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American. — Newt Gingrich

[A]s we celebrate 75 years of the minimum wage, we must also recognize that it is no longer achieving its potential impact in our economy or for America's working families. Every American deserves the chance to build a better life for his or her family - and raising the minimum wage will provide that opportunity. — Tom Harkin

If people are being upstanding citizens of the Republic, then you have to widen the net to incarcerate them. This explains why America's prisons are full of nonviolent offenders - a perfect example of American exceptionalism. — Henry Rollins

To complete the rout of traditionalists, in America an impression began to arise that the new industrial and acquisitive interests are the conservative interest, that conservatism is simply a political argument in defense of large accumulations of private property, that expansion, centralization, and accumulation are the tenets of conservatives. From this confusion, from the popular belief that Hamilton was the founder of American conservatism, the forces of tradition in the United States never have fully escaped. — Russell Kirk

The jobs crisis has reached a boiling point, which is why we see Occupy Wall Street protestors crying out for an America that lets all of us reach for the American Dream again - a dream that says if you work hard and play by the rules, you can have a good life and retire with dignity. — John Garamendi

In America, the materio-economic conditions relate to a societal, multi-group existence in a way never before know in world history. American Negro nationalism can never create its own values, find its revolutionary significance, define its political and economic goals, until Negro intellectuals take up the cudgels against the cultural imperialism practiced in all of its manifold ramifications on the Negro within American culture. But this kind of revolution would have to be predicated on the recognition that the cultural and artistic originality of the American nation is founded, historically, on the ingredients of a black aesthetic and artistic base. — Harold Cruse

A man must generally get away some hundreds or thousands of miles from home before he can be said to begin his travels. Why not begin his travels at home? Would he have to go far or look very closely to discover novelties? The traveler who, in this sense, pursues his travels at home, has the advantage at any rate of a long residence in the country to make his observations correct and profitable. Now the American goes to England, while the Englishman comes to America, in order to describe the country. — Henry David Thoreau

Together, these advocates create a pro-Israeli case so compelling that the idea and reality of Israel has worked itself deep into American culture, politics and foreign policy. Many American Jews refuse to accept it, but the real debate between Israel's supporters and detractors in America is all but over. — Aaron David Miller

In America, you're just an American. You're accepted. It doesn't matter that you're of whatever race. If anything, I'm British, and that's it. So let's just get on with it, really. — Benedict Wong

The joke was that President Bush only declared war when Starbucks was hit. You can mess with the U.N. all you want, but when you start interfering with the right to get caffeinated, someone has to pay. — Chris Kyle

Ernst was still in the Eastern Zone, about ninety kilometres from Berlin, when the truck emerged so inexplicably out of nowhere that it seemed to have been created by the rain itself. — Mordecai Richler

More than a building that houses books and data, the library has always been a window to a larger world
a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward ...
Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.
And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good. — Barack Obama

America is fascinated by crime. — Floyd C. Forsberg

This American government has become very adept at attaching labels to people who defend themselves, so that the general population in America will condone their behavior. — Leonard Peltier

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

... walk in the footprints of his ancestors. This land is a museum of man's ancient history. The American has gone to the moon and found dust, he's going farther away to look for other planets, very good. But know thyself first. That is what I would tell my American friend. — Tsegaye Gebre Medhin

Anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, Hispanic stepson, or African-American frenemy. — Wesley Morris

Inflationary trends are under way. Wage increases, through strikes or threatened strikes, are rampant. Government expenditures are ballooning ominously. Hoarding has contributed unconscionably to price-boosting. The Government should institute measures calculated to arrest inflation. America's commitments are already so mountainous, international and domestic, that the pruning knife should be applied. You and I, all American taxpayers, don't possess limitless resources-our pockets are not bottomless. Curb inflation at every turn! — B.C. Forbes

During these years in the small-talk wilderness, I also wondered why Americans valued friendliness with commerce so much. Was handing over cash the sacred rite of American capitalism - and of American life? On a day that I don't spend money in America, I feel oddly depressed. It's my main form of social interaction - as it is for millions of Americans who live alone or away from their families. — Karan Mahajan

Current public diplomacy and foreign policy making reduces the role of American citizens to mere spectators. The USIA's model of democracy and the free market is promoted as the superpower version of economic globalization, packaged and ready for shipping to clients throughout the world. In this version, foreign capital flows freely while the movement of people, particularly the world's poor, is strictly controlled. Such a commercial package speaks first and foremost for government 'partners,' the Fortune 500 corporations, which are the primary beneficiaries as well as the bankrollers of the American political process. This is a packaged story of America that is incomplete and undemocratic. Where do workers and communities fit into the story? How do private citizens play a part in building dialogue across cultures? — Nancy Snow

Every American wants MORE MORE of the world and why not, you only live once. But the mistake made in America is persons accumulate more more dead matter, machinery, possessions & rugs & fact information at the expense of what really counts as more: feeling, good feeling, sex feeling, tenderness feeling, mutual feeling. You own twice as much rug if you're twice as aware of the rug. — Allen Ginsberg

Texas Gov. Rick Perry referred to the Mexican city of Juarez as the most dangerous city in America. In his defense, he probably just thought it was an American city because there were so many Mexicans there. — Jay Leno

24.9 percent of American children live in poverty, while the proportions in Germany, France and Italy are 8.6, 7.4 and 10.5 percent. And once born on the wrong side of the tracks, Americans are more likely to stay there than their counterparts in Europe. Those born to better-off families are more likely to stay better off. America is developing an aristocracy of the rich and a serfdom of the poor - the inevitable result of a twenty-year erosion of its social contract. — Will Hutton

Ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to 'African-American.' My maternal grandmother was German and my maternal grandfather was Greek. The next time I fill out one of those forms I am going to check 'Other' and write in the truth about my racial and cultural heritage: 'African-Greek-German-American.' And proud of it. — Michael Shermer

We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain basement prices, in return for the false promise of more security ... The America being designed right now won't resemble the America we've been defending ... The danger isn't that Big Brother may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't realize that he is already inside the castle walls. — Wayne LaPierre

The emphasis on technology over an understanding of the realities of war and conflict reflect[s] the ahistoricism not only of too much of the U.S. military officer corps, but of the American educational system as well. Our mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan were the result of a pervasive failure to understand the historical framework within which insurgencies take place, to appreciate the cultural and political factors of other nations and people, and to encourage the learning of foreign languages. In other words, in Afghanistan and Iraq we managed to repeat many of the mistakes we made in Vietnam, because America's political and military leaders managed to forget nearly every lesson of that conflict. — Peter R. Mansoor

Mark Twain is a universe, and he is also a kind of American authority figure. He can say things to America that other people can't say, in a way that can truly be heard. — Val Kilmer

This is America. I don't want a tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Guatemalan and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian. — Stephen Colbert

A common strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was the advancement of a small coterie's concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism, which was defined to refer only to the organized and politically motivated killing of civilians by killers not wearing the uniforms of soldiers. I recognized that if this was to be the single most important priority of our species, then the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage. This, I reasoned, was why America felt justified in bringing so many deaths to Afghanistan and Iraq, and why America felt justified in risking so many more deaths by tacitly using India to pressure Pakistan. — Mohsin Hamid

More African American adults are under correctional control today - in prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.7 The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery.8 The absence of black fathers from families across America is not simply a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time watching Sports Center. Thousands of black men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed by whites. — Michelle Alexander

The way to an American economic comeback, the way to help those out of work today find a paycheck, is to unleash the forces of job creation in America. The source of new jobs isn't going to be the bureaucracies of Washington, but rather the creativity, ingenuity, and hard work of the American people. — Rob Portman

There must be a renewal of the spirit of our forefathers, an
appreciation of the American way of life, a strengthening of muscle and sinew and the character of the nation. America needs guts as well as guns.
National character is the core of national defense. — Ezra Taft Benson

When I was twenty-one, a friend gave me a book called Diet for a New America by John Robbins, which exposed the brutal practices of American factory farms. That, coupled with a lecture from Leonardo DiCaprio (when he was nineteen and I was twenty-one) about how such animals are kept and processed, made me lose my desire for factory farm pork and beef right there. — Gwyneth Paltrow

Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this. — Michael Eric Dyson

I also know that too many people talk too much, especially the American, who never shut up, just switch to a laugh every time he talk 'bout you, and it sound strange how he put your name beside people we never hear 'bout, Allende Lumumba, a name that sound like a country that Kunta Kinte come from. The American, most of the time hide him eye with sunglasses like he is a preacher from America come to talk to black people. Him and the Cuban come sometimes together, sometimes on they own, and when one talk the other always quiet. The Cuban don't fuck with guns because guns always need to be needed, him say. — Marlon James

I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America ... I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen. — Jerry Falwell

Call me a proud American, if you want, but I truly believe that no other nation on Earth possesses the capabilities to put on a more powerful display of underwater mermaid patriotism. — Dave Barry

Hot, isn't it?" Peter asked on the way into town, and the driver nodded. He could hear from the accent in his French that he was American, but he spoke it adequately, and the driver answered him in French, speaking slowly, so Peter could understand him. "It's been nice for a week. Did you come from America?" the driver asked with interest. People responded to Peter that way, they were drawn to him, even if they normally wouldn't have been. But the fact that he spoke French to him impressed the driver. — Danielle Steel

What the American people must never forget - is that when Fascism comes to America
it will come wrapped in American flag — Arthur Kinoy

To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics. — Mary McCarthy

Small business is the gateway to opportunity for those who want a piece of the American dream. [ ... ] Well, wouldn't it be nice to hear a little more about the forgotten heroes of America-those who create most of our new jobs, like the owners of stores down the street; the faithfuls who support our churches, synagogues, schools, and communities; the brave men and women everywhere who produce our goods, feed a hungry world, and keep our families warm while they invest in the future to build a better America? That's where miracles are made, not in Washington, D.C. — Ronald Reagan

Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed. My fundamental purpose is to interpret the typical American. I am a story teller. — Norman Rockwell

We expect 'Narcos' will be an enormous success throughout everywhere in the world and maybe out-index in Latin America, given the Brazilian star and Brazilian director and heavy Latin American cast and that we shot the show entirely on location in Colombia. — Ted Sarandos

It's about panic. It's about fear. It's about instilling the American populace with terror, dread, and apprehension about the future. It's all about making you think that your way of life is "destroying the world." America is the root of all evil in the world, according to the environmentalist wackos. You, the citizens of the United States, are ruining everything. — Rush Limbaugh

Jesse Owen was bigger than a black hero, he was an American hero. For me, I looked at it from that perspective. Through my research, I obviously learned a lot, much of which made me sad, upset, disappointed and even angry, regarding what Jesse had to go through. Not only was he a black man in America during an age of high racial tension and segregation, but he was also living in the middle of the Great Depression - it was very difficult times for him and his family. — Stephan James

Here is tragedy and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum. — H.L. Mencken

Granted, I should love my neighbor as myself, the questions which, under modern conditions of large-scale organization, remain for solution are, 'Who precisely is my neighbor?' and 'How exactly am I to make my love for them effective in practice?'... It had insisted that all men were brethren. But it did not occur to it to point out that, as a result of the new economic imperialism, which was begging to develop in the 17th century, the brethren of the English merchant were the Africans whom he kidnapped for slavery in America, or the American Indians from whom he stripped of their lands, or the Indian craftsmen whom he bought muslin's and silks at starvation prices. Religion had not yet learned to console itself for the practical difficulty of applying its moral principles by clasping the comfortable formula that for the transaction of economic life no moral principles exist. — R. H. Tawney

In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the Neo-Con-Artists seized the economy and added $4 trillion of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defence, three times more for gasoline and home-heating oil and twice what we payed for health-care. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their homes, their health-care, their pensions; trillions of dollars for an unnecessary war payed for with borrowed money. Tens of billions of dollars in cash and weapons disappeared into thin air at the cost of the lives of our troops and innocent Iraqis, while all the President's oil men are maneuvering on Iraq's oil. Borrowed money to bomb bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. No money to rebuild bridges in America. Borrowed money to start a hot war with Iran, now we have another cold war with Russia and the American economy has become a game of Russian roulette. — Dennis Kucinich

I still believe that many Americans have a deep longing for that glorious moment when a sermon is more Biblical than American. — Criss Jami

What I see as the greatest threat to America is that the American people will put political pressure on their leaders to pull out of Iraq before we should. — Thelma Drake

A year earlier my parents had moved us out of the city to a split-level on Long Island, their idea of the American dream, which meant it as now an hour-and-a-half commute via the 7:06 Hicksville to Penn Station every morning. (Dark City Lights) — Jonathan Santlofer

I want to say that further you are not a great chief of this country. That you have no following, no power, no control." Logan continued, "You are on an Indian reservation merely at the sufferance of the government. You are fed by the government, clothed by the government, your children are educated by the government, and all you have and are today is because of the government. If it were not for the government you would be freezing and starving today in the mountains. I merely say these things to notify you that you cannot insult the people of the United States of America or its committees ... the government feeds and clothes and educates your children now, and desires to teach you to become farmers, and to civilize you, and make you as white men.
-Senator John Logan, 1883 — Dee Brown

It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work. And after all there is no sense in it because if it were not for my work they would not be interested in me so why should they not be more interested in my work than in me. That is one of the things one has to worry about in America. — Gertrude Stein

Mr. Chairman, the price for continuing this war is too high, not only in budgetary terms, but in American lives, Iraqi civilian casualties blamed on America and in the steady increase in the terrorist ranks that this war is provoking around the globe. — John Conyers

I'm not the American Nightmare. I am the American Dream! — Donald Freed

I was adopted my black Americans, I feel that I'm a 'Hybrid'. When I'm around Africans'I suddenly feel very black American. And when I'm around black Americans'I feel very North African. North Africa and black America are both the creators of Kola Boof. — Kola Boof

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. — William J. Clinton

Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revolution that announced universal principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would have been no French proclamation of The Rights of Man. Without his brilliant negotiation of the Louisiana treaty, there would be no United States of America. Without Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, there would have been no Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and no basis for the most precious clause of our most prized element of our imperishable Bill of Rights - the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. — Christopher Hitchens

It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. — Kurt Vonnegut

Today, if you're an American business, you actually get a benefit for going overseas. You get to defer your taxes. So if you're looking at a competitive world, you say to yourself, "Hey, I do better overseas than I do here in America." — John F. Kerry

We have been told we cannot do this by a coarse of sentence: it will only grow louder and more dissident. we have been asked to pause for a reality check, we have been warned about offering this nation false hope, but in the unlikely story that is america there has never been anything false about hope.
nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change
the hopes of little girl who goes to a public school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of a little boy who learns on the streets of L.A. We will remember that there is something happening in America, that we are not as devided as our politics suggest, that we are one people, we are one nation and together we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: YES WE CAN!
yes we can to justice and equality
yes we can to oppurtunity and prosperity — Barack Obama

How many senators have taken their conception of what America can do from what they've seen on the American movie screen? — Zia Haider Rahman

The fact that an African American sits in the White House at the helm of government in the United States of America on this 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation represents both phenomenal political symbolism and a victory of faith in democracy that should not be lost on any American. — Aberjhani

Because my parents were American missionaries who sent me to public schools in rural Japan, I had to confront Hiroshima as a child. I was in the fourth grade - the only American in my class - when our teacher wrote the words "America" and "Atomic Bomb" in white chalk on the blackboard. All forty Japanese children turned around to stare at me. My country had done something unforgivable and I had to take responsibility for it, all by myself. I desperately wanted to dig a hole under my desk, to escape my classmates' mute disbelief and never have to face them again. — Linda Hoaglund

When I grew up, all of our news, weather, and sports came from America. The people where I grew up rooted for American teams as opposed to Canadian teams. — Lori Lansens

I think we are in fact, losing free speech. We don't seem to care though. Many of us don't seem to notice. We will have to do a lot of work to bring back the American way to America. — Henry Rollins

The real reason French women don't get fat is not genetic, but cultural, and if the French subjected themselves to the American extremes of eating and dieting, the obesity problem in France would be much worse than what has struck America. — Mireille Guiliano

Race is a constant factor in American life. Yet reacting to every incident,real or imagined, is crippling, tiring, and ultimately counterproductive. — Condoleezza Rice

My father once told me that American democracy is a people's democracy at heart, and that it therefore can be as great as the American people, or as fallible. It depends on all of us. But our system is more fragile than we know. To sustain it, we must always cherish the ideals on which it was founded, remain vigilant against the dark forces that threaten it, and actively engage in the process of making it work. — George Takei

I'm so proud of my Chinese ancestry, but I was born and raised in America, and I really believe in American values, our American system, our freedom, our liberties. — Gary Locke

I love America for its bourgeois comfort. If I was as heavily in debt as they are, I wouldn't be drinking tea or coffee anywhere. I would be sipping tap water from an old bottle and serving others tea or coffee in a cafe somewhere. — Vann Chow

The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind. — Pope Pius XII

First, to begin with, Mexico is North American; the one that is using wrong the term is United States. United States is not North America. North America is Mexico, United States, and Canada. — Vicente Fox

On 11 September 2012 crowds of friendly locals in Kabul, Afghanistan, were chanting the usual 'Death to America' slogans. At the same time American flags were torched from London to Sydney. And in Benghazi, Libya, a group of 'spontaneous protesters' arrived at the US consulate with rocket-propelled grenades and savagely murdered the US ambassador. In Washington, members of the Obama administration were, as we have already seen, showing that they weren't taking any of this personally. It wasn't about them and it certainly wasn't about their ambassador, who had in fact been murdered by terrorists in a pre-planned attack. The administration was still claiming all this was caused by an excerpt from an amateur film which had been up on YouTube for weeks. — Douglas Murray

Coyote: A small canid (Canis latrans) native to western North America that is closely related to the American wolf and whose cry has often been compared to that of Sippie Wallace and Janis Joplin, amongst others. — Sherman Alexie

There is an almost anti-epicurean tradition at the very base of America. For much of the middle part of American history, people who wanted to overcome that went to France. — Ruth Reichl

And the American people are the greatest people in the world. What makes America the greatest nation in the world is the heart of the American people: hardworking, innovative, risk-taking, God- loving, family-oriented American people. — Mitt Romney

Jazz is the favorite music [of America]. It is a type of music invented by [American] Blacks to please their primitive tendencies and desire for noise. — Sayyid Qutb

We are fascinated by Ramses as Renaissance Christians were by the American Indians, those (human?) beings who had never known the word of Christ. — Jean Baudrillard

We will either bring on another American century, or we are doomed to witness America's decline. — Marco Rubio

America's workers face a battle for their jobs. They are the finest workers in the world. American workers grow, harvest, and mine some of the world's highest quality and most plentiful raw materials. — Kit Bond

There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong. — G.K. Chesterton

I find American girls have a spirit and honesty about them that is most refreshing. — Ann Rinaldi

What does it mean to be an American? While each of us may have our own specific answer to that question, we likely can agree on the basic principles of America: freedom, equal opportunity, and rights accompanied by responsibilities. — Ben Nelson

I did do an American pilot, but it wasn't shot in America, it was shot in South Africa. It was called 'The Philanthropist,' and it was for NBC. — Dominique McElligott

American Protestants do not have to believe in God because they believe in belief. That is why we have never been able to produce an interesting atheist in America. — Stanley Hauerwas

Now and always, we expect to insist upon it that we are Americans, that America is our native land; that this is our home; that we are American citizens . . . and that it is the duty of the American people so to recognize us. - FREDERICK DOUGLASS A — Elizabeth Dowling Taylor

The United States stands at the pinnacle of world power. This is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with primacy in power is joined an awe-inspiring accountability for the future. — Winston Churchill

As America is transformed from a 90 percent European American nation, as it was in the 1960s, to one where we will soon be a minority, should we not ask some pertinent questions. Is this racial diversity enriching, or will it be damaging to our social fabric? — David Duke

After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people. — Ernesto Che Guevara

The people of North America, at this time, expect a revisal and reformation of the American Governments, and are better disposed to submit to it than ever they were, or perhaps ever will be again.97. This is therefore the proper and critical time to reform the American governments upon a general, constitutional, firm, and durable plan; and if it is not done now, it will probably every day grow more difficult, till at last it becomes impracticable. — Sir Francis Bernard, 1st Baronet