American Families Quotes & Sayings

We can all agree that no American should lose their life savings or their home because of illness or injury and that the rising cost of health care severely burdens individuals, families and businesses. — Judd Gregg

The Shriver Report presents an accurate and detailed portrait of American women and families at this transformational moment in our history. — Maria Shriver

The American people know that our economy is struggling right now, partly because of the debt that is impacting American families, hardworking taxpayers all across this country. — Cathy McMorris Rodgers

A budget should be judged by whether it creates a foundation for the success of American working families striving to buy a house, or to send their kids to college, or to save a little for retirement and, if they're lucky, a vacation. — Jeff Merkley

There was no singles problem until singles got so single-minded that they stopped wasting time with anyone ineligible. Before that, it was understood that one of society's main tasks was matchmaking. People with lifelong friendships and ties to local nonprofessional organizations did not have to fear that isolation would accompany retirement, old age, or losing a spouse. Overburdened householders could count on the assistance not only of their own extended families, but of the American tradition of neighborliness. — Judith Martin

More Americans own their home than ever before. Nearly 70 percent of American's are homeowners. So it is a good time for us to asses the positive impacts of homeownership on families, communities and on the nation's economy. — Randy Neugebauer

like many families, everyone wandered around like children in a funhouse - they could hardly see one another around the corners, and what they could see was completely distorted. — James Hannaham

The fact is every single day in the ordinary American people, America's families have to make decisions about their families and that should be made by them, not by the Texas or United States. — Barack Obama

[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

American families only spend 17 minutes a day on average having time together. — Daniel L. Doctoroff

However, my first visits to the tenement-house districts in question made me feel that, whatever the theories might be, as a matter of practical common sense I could not conscientiously vote for the continuance of the conditions which I saw. These conditions rendered it impossible for the families of the tenement-house workers to live so that the children might grow up fitted for the exacting duties of American citizenship. — Theodore Roosevelt

We need to focus on getting people back to work, focus on jobs, the economy, the debt and the spending. That's what will improve the quality of life for American families and for hard-working taxpayers. — John Barrasso

We work on macro issues and macaroni and cheese issues. When women are in the halls of power, our national debate reflects the needs and dreams of American families. — Barbara Mikulski

That's one of the biggest losses, I think, to African American families, is that people, once they left, they turned away from the South. They didn't look back, and they often didn't tell their children about it. They didn't want to talk about it. It was too painful, what they'd gone through and the caste system of the South, which was Jim Crow. — Isabel Wilkerson

If we don't empower families to be able to have a quality education, then their children - for the first time in American history, truly the first time - will not have the same economic opportunities. — Jeb Bush

In the past the intrinsic pleasures of parenthood for most American families were increased by the extrinsic economic return thatchildren brought. Today, parents have children despite their economic cost. This is a major, indeed a revolutionary, change. — Kenneth Keniston

Donald Trump is a leader. He produces results and is ready to get tough in order to protect American jobs and families. — Joe Arpaio

It's my belief that, like every other American, gay and lesbian couples should be able to make a lifetime commitment to the person they love and protect their families. — Mark Udall

Will gritted his teeth as Will Junior and Nellie continued their debate. He loved his son, but he found him
and many members of hisgeneration
ruthless in their pursuit of money and standing and harsh toward the less fortunate. He had reminded him on many occasions that both the McClanes and their mother's family
the Van der leydens
had at one time been immigrants. As had members of all the city's wealthy families. But Will's lectures made no difference to his son. He was an American. And those getting off the boat at Castle Garden were not. Italian, Irish, Chinese, Polish
nationality made no difference. They were lazy, stupid, and dirty. Their numbers spelled ruin for the country. p. 264 — Jennifer Donnelly

By balancing the needs of families and employers, and by extending a safe haven to those fleeing persecution, our immigration policy serves its historic purpose. Freedom and opportunity is the cornerstone of American society, and immigrants continue to embody that freedom. — Spencer Abraham

So it seems that because of every syndrome and disorder we've invented in the past twenty years, the Los Angeles Times reported that 63% of American families are now considered dysfunctional. My God! That means we're the majority. We're normal! It's the people who have the mommy, the daddy, the brother, the sister, the little white picket fence - those people are the freaks, man! — Christopher Titus

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

Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families. — Benjamin Rush

The Right thinks that the breakdown of the family is the source of crime and poverty, and this they very insightfully blame on the homosexuals, which would be amusing were it not so tragic. Families and 'family values' are crushed by grinding poverty, which also makes violent crime and drugs attractive alternatives to desperate young men and sends young women into prostitution. Family values are no less corrupted by the corrosive effects of individualism, consumerism, and the accumulation of wealth. Instead of shouting this from the mountain tops, the get-me-to-heaven-and-the-rest-be-damned Christianity the Christian Right preaches is itself a version of selfish spiritual capitalism aimed at netting major and eternal dividends, and it fits hand in glove with American materialism and greed. — John D. Caputo

Studies have consistently shown that financial hardship is the biggest obstacle to heterosexual marriage, yet the Republican leadership has done precious little to help address the financial hardship faced by American families. — Kendrick Meek

It's more important than ever for America to rededicate itself to manufacturing at home. When we make more products in America, more American families will make it. — Jackie Speier

We smoked the way other American families would have wine with dinner. For us, it was our sacrament. It was something that made a great life sweeter in every possible way, — Ann Druyan

American families, families back home in Minnesota, know only too well that out-of-pocket expenses for health care have been rising at an astonishing rate. — Jim Ramstad

As winter weather settles in around the country, millions of American families are facing skyrocketing home heating prices with even greater impact if cold temperatures persist into the spring. — Russ Carnahan

Why did mainstream America come to accept marriage equality? Gay leaders had made a convincing case that gay families were like straight families and should have the same rights. The American spirit of fair play had been invoked. — Edmund White

In 1950, American families sent 1 of 50 of their hard earned dollars to Washington: Today it is 1 in 4. — John Ensign

In the 5 years, well over 60,000 American families have been broken apart by the absence of insurance because the only way for parents to get treatment for their children is to turn the custody of those children over to the State. — Patrick J. Kennedy

Millions of American families affected by debilitating diseases have new hope today after the U.S. House passed legislation to support potentially life-saving stem cell research. — Nancy Johnson

Ginsberg turned out to be depressingly prescient when, after a heated argument with Norman Podhoretz in 1958, he yelled, 'We'll get you through your children!' For countless American families, that turned out to be only too true. — Roger Kimball

The economic hardship of my family and of many others, a century ago, was caused by a monopoly, the American Tobacco Company, which had eliminated all competitors and thus was able to reduce as it pleased the prices it paid to farmers. The American Tobacco Company was the work of James B. Duke of Durham, North Carolina, and New York City, who, disregarding any other consideration, followed a capitalist logic to absolute control of his industry and, incidentally, of the economic fate of thousands of families such as my own. — Wendell Berry

The very same British and American families who had combined to wreck the Indian textile industry in the promotion of the opium trade [ ... ] combined to make the trade, a valuable source of revenue. In 1864 they joined forces to create causes for war and to promote the terrible War Between the States, also known as the American Civil War. — John Coleman

The beauty of being black in American society is that black has always been an inclusive definition. White has always been an exclusive definition. I think one of the challenges for white people is to figure out how to have a more inclusive picture of who their families are, of who they are. — Benjamin Jealous

Do the elected officials in Washington stand with ordinary Americans - working families, children, the elderly, the poor - or will the extraordinary power of billionaire campaign contributors and Big Money prevail? The American people, by the millions, must send Congress the answer to that question. — Bernie Sanders

Montanans believe in the right to make a good life for their families. How they define a family should be their business and their business alone. I'm proud to support marriage equality because no one should be able to tell a Montanan or any American who they can love and who they can marry. — Jon Tester

As a first generation Jewish American, I have witnessed firsthand Jewish immigrants who have come to this Nation in order to create a better life for themselves, their families, and future generations. — Jan Schakowsky

Through good times and bad, American workers and their families have been able to rely on Social Security to provide guaranteed protection against the loss of earnings due to retirement, disability, or death. — Sander Levin

Rome became a republic in 509 B.C., after driving out its king and abolishing the monarchy. The next two centuries saw a long struggle for power between a group of noble families, patricians, and ordinary citizens, plebeians, who were excluded from public office. The outcome was a apparent victory for the people, but the old aristocracy, supplemented by rich pledeian nobles, still controlled the state. What looked in many ways like democracy was, in fact, an oligarcy modified by elections. — Anthony Everitt

On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atonement or Remembrance (NOT ONE), no thanks for 400+ years of free labor, forced servitude across the Trans-Atlantic, ass beatings, buying ourselves and families out of slavery, rape and plunder ... but everyone else has monuments, special museums, and even movies. This is what America thinks of black people, so-called black president and all, who has been largely silent on this subject ... we'll even celebrate Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, and Secretary's Day before we acknowledge our history. — Brandi L. Bates

YEARS AGO I WORKED ON A GOVERNMENT TASK force studying fatherhood and healthy families. As we met in DC, I learned one of the main causes of the breakdown of the American family was the Industrial Revolution. When men left their homes and farms to work on assembly lines, they disconnected their sense of worth from the well-being of their wives and children and began to associate it with efficiency and productivity in manufacturing. While the Industrial Revolution served the world in terrific ways, it was also a mild tragedy in our social evolution. Raising healthy children became a woman's job. Food was no longer grown in the backyard, it was bought at a store with money earned from the necessary separation of the father. Within a few generations, then, intimacy in family relationships began to be monopolized by females. — Donald Miller

The American people know what's necessary to get this economy moving again. It's fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C. and across-the-board tax relief for working families, small businesses and family farms. — Mike Pence

Superstition, as indigenous to Louisiana as gators and Tabasco, holds that the spirits of the dead avenge any disruption of their bodies, which makes one wonder at the rancor released on the 1957 day when fifty-five white families re-interred their beloved in Hope Mausoleum after the Rt. Rev. Girault M. Jones, Bishop of Louisiana, deconsecrated the Girod Street Cemetery, condemning every last African American bone to anonymity in a mass grave in Providence Memorial Park. From that pogrom grew the Superdome. Thirteen acres of structural steel framing stretch up to 273 feet from the unholy ground, a towering testament to the American propensity to cheer black men into the end zones and desert them entirely six points later. — Ellen Urbani

Over the past two generations, 48 percent of all African American families have lived in the poorest quarter of neighborhoods in each generation. The most common experience for black families since the 1970s, by a wide margin, has been to live in the poorest American neighborhoods over consecutive generations. Only 7 percent of white families have experienced similar poverty in their neighborhood environments for consecutive generations. By contrast, persistent neighborhood advantage is virtually nonexistent for black families. One out of every one hundred black families in the United States has lived in affluent neighborhoods over the past two generations, compared to roughly one out of five white families. — Patrick Sharkey

Everything depends on a good job - strong families, strong communities, the pursuit of the American dream, and a tax base to support schools for our kids and services for our seniors. — Bob Taft

For American families, Universal pre-K is an essential piece of the puzzle that not only allows their kids to get a good start, but it also allows mothers to remain on the job earning a paycheck and helping our economy grow. — Kirsten Gillibrand

We must give Oklahoma families the opportunity to thrive and prosper. We must give all Oklahomans the tools necessary to pursue the American dream. And then, we must get out of the way. — Brad Henry

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates. — Erma Bombeck

Like so many American families, our families weren't asking for much. They didn't begrudge anyone else's success or care that others had much more than they did ... in fact, they admired it. — Michelle Obama

In the 1870s it was estimated that a third of all the money in the Irish economy came from money sent by kindhearted Irish servant girls to their families. The Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in New York alone would send more than $30 million to Ireland between 1850 and 1880. Many families in Ireland owed their survival to what they gratefully called the "American Letter," a lifeline that helped them cope with brutal poverty and lack of opportunity. — Rashers Tierney

Regarding national security, we need to restore the defense cuts of Barack Obama to rebuild our military, to destroy ISIS before it destroys us. Regarding economic security, we need to take power and money away from Washington D.C. and empower American families so that they can rise up again. — Jeb Bush

I am emphatically against the privatization of Social Security. It is going to hurt millions of American women, American families and ultimately the whole country. — Barbara Mikulski

There are African-American families around this country - a large, large number of African-American families - that operate out of complete fear that their kids are going to be taken from them and will do anything to prevent that. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

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

As American families and businesses have been forced to tighten their belts, Washington has refused to do the same. — Sean Duffy

How important are money management and finances in marriage and family affairs? Tremendously. The American Bar Association recently indicated that 89 percent of all divorces could be traced to quarrels and accusations over money. Another study estimated that 75 percent of all divorces result from clashes over finances. Some professional counselors indicated that four out of every five families wrestle with serious money problems ... — Jeffrey R. Holland

Women would be disproportionately affected by the privatization of social security. It is one of the most important safety nets for American women in old age, or in times of disability, to insure financial income for their families. — Barbara Mikulski

Of course she'd understood for years now; she'd worked out long ago that families, unless they inhabit American TV shows, do not communicate when they speak. — Araminta Hall

The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city school and broken black families. — Star Parker

The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's eugenics studies were initially endowed by Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the head of the Krupp munitions monolith, and James Loeb, of the Kuhn-Loeb banking family. Loeb's relatives, the Warburgs, were banking partners of William Rockefeller, and both families were responsible for setting up the American Harriman family - also movers and shakers in eugenics - in business. — Jim Keith

Television's escapist programming naturally continues to endorse living beyond one's means as the time-tested American Way and rarely depicts families or individuals wracked by the pressures and miseries that come with excess. — Tom Shales

College is part of the American dream. It shouldn't be part of a financial nightmare for families. — Barbara Mikulski

The film 'Documented,' a project of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Define American campaign, is about my families: the family I was blessed to be born into, and the family of friends, mentors and allies that I found when I moved to the United States at 12, a Filipino kid trying to make sense of my new home in America. — Jose Antonio Vargas

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

Rather than address the priorities of the middle class, the Ryan budget is an attack on American seniors, students, workers, and families - all for the sake of protecting loopholes for the wealthy and corporations that ship jobs overseas. — Albio Sires

For Americans the contradiction between national ideal and social fact required explanation and correction. Ultimately this contradiction did not lead to the abandonment of the ideal of equal opportunity but rather to its postponement: to the notion of achieving for the next generation what could not be achieved for the current one. And the chief means to this end was a brilliant American invention: universal, free, compulsory public education. This "solution" was especially important for children and families because it gave children a central role in achieving the national ideal. — Kenneth Keniston

After a decade of profligacy, the American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don't walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility. It's easy to get up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits. What's hard is actually getting deficits under control. But that's what we must do. Like families across the country, we have to take responsibility for every dollar we spend. — Barack Obama

Other Afghans from American, or from Europe," Amra says, "they come and take picture of her. They take video. They make promises. Then they go home and show their families. LIke she is zoo animal. I allow it because I think maybe they will help. But they forget. I never hear from them. — Khaled Hosseini

The stimulus legislation, technically known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was a mixture of tax cuts for families and businesses; increased transfer payments, like unemployment insurance; and increased direct government spending, like infrastructure investment. — Christina Romer

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

Strangely, the subsequent AIDS works that have become iconic in our culture rarely mention the movement, or the engaged community of lovers, but both formations were inseparable from the crisis itself. Now, looking back, I fear that the story of the isolated helpless homosexual was one far more palatable to the corporations who control the reward system in the arts.The more truthful story of the American mass - abandoning families, criminal governments, indifferent neighbors - is too uncomfortable and inconvenient to recall. The story of how gay people who were despised, had no rights, and carried the burden of a terrible disease came together to force the country to change against its will, is apparently too implicating to tell. Fake tales of individual heterosexuals heroically overcoming their prejudices to rescue helpless dying men with AIDS was a lot more appealing to the powers that be, but not at all true. — Sarah Schulman

The sense that materialism has gotten out of hand is magnified by the pressures facing middle-class American families. — Robert Wuthnow

Fifth of American families lived on farms in the 1930s, — Gail Collins

We are giving assurance to the American families that help is on its way. — Edward Kennedy

Everyone knows dogs. Most people love dogs. I think most American families probably have a dog, but I don't think people really realize or understand just how wonderful and special dogs are. — Robert Crais

When times are not so prosperous, we think at least our successful career will save us and our families from failure and despair. We are attracted, against our skepticism, to the idea that poverty will be alleviated by the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table ... Some of us often feel, and most of us sometimes feel, that we are only someone if we have made it: can look down on those who have not. The American dream is often a very private dream of being a star, the uniquely successful and admirable one, the one who stands out from the crowd of ordinary folk, who don't know how. And since we have believed in that dream for a long time and worked very hard to make it come true, it is hard for us to give it up, even though it contradicts another dream that we have - that of living in a society that would really be worth living in.3 — Chris Hedges

[Voltaire] theoretically prefers a republic, but he knows its flaws: it permits factions which, if they do not bring on civil war, at least destroy national unity; it is suited only to small states protected by geographic situation, and as yet unspoiled and untorn with wealth; in general "men are rarely worthy to govern themselves." Republics are transient at best; they are the first form of society, arising from the union of families; the American Indians lived in tribal republics, and Africa is full of such democracies. but differentiation of economic status puts an end to these egalitarian governments; and differentiation is the inevitable accompaniment of development. — Will Durant

Our families and our homes are the center of American life, Everything we do is to make those homes-and the lives in them-more beautiful, more comfortable, more functional and more full of life and light and joy for those we love. — Martha Stewart

The family I'm from, well, no one had their name on big buildings. My family were builders of a different kind. Builders in the way most American families are. They used whatever tools they had - whatever God gave them - and whatever life in America provided - and built better lives and better futures for their kids. — Hillary Clinton

American families be warned, if the White House doesn't send your jobs overseas, they'll send your kids. — Joe Baca

I see little hope for a nation that values the health of its livestock more than that of its people ... Farmers are not criticized for routinely giving their (live)stock nutritional supplements ... superior to any sold for humans ... Millions of families could plant home gardens if they truly wanted health. Refined food are practically unknown in Russia. The life expectancy of the 40-year-old American is near the lowest in the world. — Adelle Davis

I went to public schools, and while Gary was, like most American cities, racially segregated, it was at least socially integrated - a cross section of children from families of all walks of life. — Joseph Stiglitz

And as you point out, for American families who struggle every day to figure out how do they pay, we talk about gasoline prices. That throws budgets into a real problem when you have budgeted really tight. — Allyson Schwartz

There is one unmistakable lesson in American history: A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

It is important that Congress works to promote home ownership in Indian Country. These federal housing funds and programs will help young Native American families to stay on tribal lands in order to live, work and raise a family. — Rick Renzi

Every child learned the skills and attitudes that are valued by their own class culture. But outside of the family unit, all skills were not considered to be equal. Modern American culture, Lareau wrote, valued the qualities that middle-class children were developing over the ones that poor and working-class children were developing. "Central institutions in the society, such as schools," Lareau wrote, "firmly and decisively promote strategies of concerted cultivation in child rearing. For working-class and poor families, the cultural logic of child rearing at home is out of synch with the standards of institutions." In one poor household Lareau studied, for example, family members didn't look each other in the eye when they spoke - an appropriate response in a culture where eye contact can be interpreted as a threat, but ill-suited to a job interview where a firm handshake and a steady gaze are considered assets, and a failure to make eye contact can make a candidate seem shifty. — Paul Tough

The hometown economic elite - rich local families or individuals whom people used to praise or revile, read about in the society pages, and gossip about incessantly - disappeared from most American cities decades ago. — Timothy Noah

It is our responsibility as Americans to provide for the families of those who have died to defend our nation. Raising the military death benefit is not a Democrat or Republican issue - it is an American issue. — Brian Baird

In some countries, of course, Spanish is the language spoken in public. But for many American children whose families speak Spanish at home, it becomes a private language. They use it to keep the English-speaking world at bay. — Richard Rodriguez

The operators were bound together by what they were running from - poverty in all its forms, despair, hunger, decimated families - as well as what they hoped to gain. Their imaginations were filled with American treasures: — Adriana Trigiani

The vast majority of the American people are hard-working taxpayers who take responsibility for their families, go to work every day, they pay their mortgage on time, they volunteer in their community. — Marco Rubio

The Reagan years "produced one of the most dramatic redistributions of income in the nation's history ... The income of families in the bottom decile fell by 10.4 percent ... while the income of those in the top one percent rose by 87.1 percent."
Chain Reaction, 23 — Thomas B. Edsall

I'm a writer. These people are American nomads, forever on the move, trying to feed themselves and their families. I'm thinking about writing a book about them. My name is John Steinbeck. Perhaps you've heard of me." After — Homer Hickam

In the United States, the average is two children per family, while in Africa it is five children per family. On the surface, the statistic seems to indicate that Africans are having way too many kids and are taxing the Earth's resources, while American kids are born into families who are able to take care of them. However, the average American child consumes roughly the same resources as fifteen African children. So when an American family says they only have two children, they are actually consuming the resources of an African family of thirty children! — Sharon Gannon

We urgently need a debate about the best ways of supporting families in modern America, without blinders that prevent us from seeing the full extent of dependence and interdependence in American life. As long as we pretend that only poor or abnormal families need outside assistance, we will shortchange poor families, overcompensate rich ones, and fail to come up with effective policies for helping families in the middle. — Stephanie Coontz

Specifically, the growing threat that sexual predators pose to our Nation's children and their families represents an area where our criminal justice system has failed the American people. — Paul Gillmor

We were the daughters of the post-World War II American dream, the daughters of those idealized fifties sitcom families in which father knew best and mother knew her place and a kind of disappointment, and tense, unspoken sexuality rattled around like ice cubes in their nightly cocktails. — Anne Taylor Fleming