American Dream Famous Quotes & Sayings

I was brought up on the romance of American achievement. No matter where you start, if you work hard and if you think positively and if you dream dreams and if you have good character, you can lift the status of yourself, your family, your friends and everyone around you. This doesn't mean that your object in life is to become rich or famous. Just do the best you can with yourself. I think that Almighty God has put that into us and I'm going to do the best I can with myself. That's what I call the romance of achievement. Achievement means to be what, by the grace of God, you can be ... — Norman Vincent Peale

We as Americans are completely obsessed and wrapped up in a lot of the wrong values
looking good, having cash in the bank, being perceived as rich, famous and successful or just being famous, .. It's the most superficial part of the American dream and who would know better than me? The only thing that's going to bring you happiness is love and how you treat your fellow man and having compassion for one another. — Madonna Ciccone

The American Dream is a term that is often used but also often misunderstood. It isn't really about becoming rich or famous. It is about things much simpler and more fundamental than that. — Marco Rubio

The "pursuit of happiness" is such a key element of the "American (ideological) dream" that one tends to forget the contingent origin of this phrase: "We holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Where did the somewhat awkward "pursuit of happiness" come from in this famous opening passage of the US Declaration of Independence? The origin of it is John Locke, who claimed that all men had the natural rights of life, liberty, and property - the latter was replaced by "the pursuit of happiness" during negotiations of the drafting of the Declaration, as a way to negate the black slaves' right to property. — Slavoj Zizek

Law students are famous for busting their buns to make high grades, sometimes at the expense of health and relationships, thinking, 'Later I'll be happy, because the American dream will be mine,' " said Lawrence S. Krieger, a law professor at Florida State University and an author of the study. "Nice, except it doesn't work." The problem with the more prestigious jobs, said Mr. Krieger, is that they do not provide feelings of competence, autonomy or connection to others - three pillars of self-determination theory, the psychological model of human happiness on which the study was based. Public-service jobs do. — Anonymous