American Prosperity Quotes & Sayings

The American People will come first once again. My plan will begin with safety at home - which means safe neighborhoods, secure borders, and protection from terrorism. There can be no prosperity without law and order. — Donald Trump

We have reached in this country an amazing degree of general prosperity, with American business on the whole no longer facing an uphill climb. — Charles M. Schwab

Magazines devoted to the religion of success appear as Makers of America. They mean just about that when they preach evolution, progress, prosperity, being constructive, the American way of doing things. It is easy to laugh, but, in fact, they are using a very great pattern of human endeavor. For one thing it adopts an impersonal criterion; for another it adopts an earthly criterion; for a third it is habituating men to think quantitatively. To be sure the idea confuses excellence with size, happiness with speed, and human nature with contraption. Yet the same motives are at work which have ever actuated any moral code, or ever will. The desire fir the biggest, the fastest, the highest, or if you are a maker of wristwatches or microscopes the smallest; the love in short of the superlative and the "peerless," is in essence and possibility a noble passion. — Walter Lippmann

The gross domestic product (GDP) was created in the 1930s to measure the value of the sum total of economic goods and services generated over a single year. The problem with the index is that it counts negative as well as positive economic activity. If a country invests large sums of money in armaments, builds prisons, expands police security, and has to clean up polluted environments and the like, it's included in the GDP. Simon Kuznets, an American who invented the GDP measurement tool, pointed out early on that "[t]he welfare of a nation can . . . scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income."28 Later in life, Kuznets became even more emphatic about the drawbacks of relying on the GDP as a gauge of economic prosperity. He warned that "[d]istinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth . . . . Goals for 'more' growth should specify more growth of what and for what."29 — Jeremy Rifkin

How much of assumed national and personal character comes from the fact that we have never truly known need to the point of having our character tested? Willing conscientious objectors underwent controlled starvation and confirmed how quickly it impacts the initiative and generosity we like to think of as "American" characteristics. — Nathaniel Philbrick

The failure of national economic policy is costing us more than jobs; it has begun to weaken that uniquely American spirit of risk-taking, large ambition, and optimism about the future. We must rally them now to bold departures that rebuild our national morale as well as our material prosperity. — Mitch Daniels

Americans have always pursued our dreams within a free market that has been the engine of our progress. It's a market that has created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, and rewarded the innovators and risk-takers who have made America a beacon of science, and technology, and discovery. But the American economy has worked in large part because we have guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle - that America prospers when all Americans can prosper. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair, and open, and honest. — Barack Obama

We have had good and bad Presidents, and it is a consoling reflection that the American Nation possesses such elements of prosperity that the bad Presidents cannot destroy it, and have been able to do no more than slightly to retard the public's advancement. — Henry Clay

I'm an American. I'm for prosperity. I've discovered, from 40 years of reporting, that what creates prosperity is limited government. — John Stossel

But this new class seeks to reduce the American working class to the levels of this global serfdom. After all, anything that drains corporate coffers is a loss of freedom
the God-given American freedom to exploit other human beings to make money. The marriage of this gospel of prosperity with raw, global capitalism, and the flaunting of the wealth and privilege it brings, are supposedly blessed and championed by Jesus Christ. Compassion is regulated to private, individual acts of charity or left to the churches. The callousness of the ideology, the notion that it in any way reflects the message of the gospels, which were preoccupied with the poor and the outcasts, illustrates how the new class has twisted Christian scripture to serve America's god of capitalism and discredited the Enlightenment values we once prized. — Chris Hedges

Perhaps this view has to do with the beginnings of modern America, which are to me, like the big bang theory, violent and wonderous. No one was safe from hatred and betrayal. Everyone was fighting to survive. It seemed the American Gypsies weren't immune to the neck-breaking race for what became the American Dream. Like so many others, they were more than willing to cut their roots in order to stake their claim on prosperity. Could that be the reason the American Gypsies largely escaped the more malevolent prejudices their European counterparts suffered? — Oksana Marafioti

The American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality; and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization. — Herbert Croly

Let it be immediately added, however, that this economic independence and prosperity has always been absolutely associated in the American mind with free political institutions. — Herbert Croly

You see, without hard work and responsibility, there is no American Dream. Hard work lays the foundation. Our solidarity makes work pay - for all of us. For the greater good. That's what our vision of shared prosperity is all about. — Richard Trumka

We set forth on a journey to bring our vision to our country, to keep the American dream alive for all who are willing to work for it, to make our American community stronger, to keep America the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and prosperity. — William J. Clinton

Samuel Gompers was the founder and first president of the American Federation of Labor. He established in America the tradition of practical bargaining between labor and management which led to an era of growth and prosperity for labor unions. Now, seventy years after Gomper's death, the unions have dwindled, while his dreams-more books and fewer guns, more leisure and less greed, more schoolhouses and fewer jails-have been tacitly abandoned. In a society without social justice and with a free-market ideology, guns, greed, and jails are bound to win. — Freeman Dyson

By 1975 - and continuing to today - all Americans came to believe that they had a "right" to a safe, clean, healthy environment. When I grew up, no one seriously criticized the steel mills and paper mills for the deadly stench they produced - that was the smell of prosperity. In the modern society, no one would tolerate such conditions in an American city. — Denis Hayes

The shortest distance between where we are today as a nation and an effective return to increasing our freedoms and widespread prosperity is for regular American citizens to read and study the great books. — Oliver DeMille

The fundamental principles of prosperity in every country are so well understood that they need but little if any discussion. They are so simple that with the proper cooperative action the American people collectively can easily place this wonderful country of ours in the position that it is so well qualified to hold among the nations of the world. — Charles M. Schwab

[N]ow that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women. — Alexis De Tocqueville

We have to wrap this imperative of addressing climate change in a prosperity framework, and secondly we have to do a much better job of putting forward an American jobs agenda that's a match for the climate challenge. — Martin O'Malley

Liberals have created, and the minority leadership has exploited, a community of dependent people, unaware of the true route to prosperity and happiness: self-reliance and self-investment. Instead, people are told that American is unjust, unfair, and full of disadvantages. They are told that their only hope is for government to fix their problems. What has happened is that generations of people have bought into this nonsense and as result have remained hopelessly mired in poverty and despair
because the promised solutions don't work. And they will never work
they never have. — Rush Limbaugh

The 21st century can and must be an American century. It began with terror, war, and economic calamity. It is our duty to steer it onto the path of freedom, peace, and prosperity. — Mitt Romney

After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of the opinion that the great majority of people will always find these are the moving impulses of our life. But it is only those who do not understand our people, who believe that our national life is entirely absorbed by material motives. We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. — Calvin Coolidge

Revolution was the great nightmare of eighteenth-century British society, and when first the American Revolution of 1776, then the French Revolution of 1789 overturned the accepted order, the United Kingdom exercised all its power so that revolution would not damage its own hardwon security and growing prosperity. Eighteenth-century writing is full of pride in England as the land of liberty (far ahead of France, the great rival, in political maturity), and saw a corresponding growth in national self-confidence accompanying the expansion of empire. — Ronald Carter

Look back over the last hundred years and you'll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income - as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 - the nation as a whole grew faster, and median wages surged. The basic bargain ensured that the pay of American workers coincided with their output. In effect, the vast middle class received an increasing share of the benefits of economic growth. We created that virtuous cycle in which an ever-growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats. On the other hand, during periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion - as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day - growth slowed, median wages stagnated, and we suffered giant downturns. — Robert B. Reich

Cities can become the engines that fuel our nation's growth and prosperity, and they can be wide gateways for families to achieve their own American dream of prosperity. — Cory Booker

Aggregate aid is to the Ethiopian economy what Obama's fiscal stimulus was to the American economy: minus these injections, both economies would suffer catastrophically. The theatrical blustering of the Ethiopian government notwithstanding, donor countries have a make-or-break power over the Ethiopia's prosperity. — Eskinder Nega

The words consent of the governed have become an empty phrase. Our textbooks on political science and economics are obsolete. Our nation has been hijacked by oligarchs, corporations, and a narrow, selfish, political, and economic elite, a small and privileged group that governs, and often steals, on behalf of moneyed interests. This elite, in the name of patriotism and democracy, in the name of all the values that were once part of the American system and defined the Protestant work ethic, has systematically destroyed our manufacturing sector, looted the treasury, corrupted our democracy, and trashed the financial system. During this plundering we remained passive, mesmerized by the enticing shadows on the wall, assured our tickets to success, prosperity, and happiness were waiting around the corner. — Chris Hedges

Everybody complains about pork, but members of Congress keep spending because voters do not throw them out of office for doing so. The rotten system in Congress will change only when the American people change their beliefs about the proper role of government in our society. Too many members of Congress believe they can solve all economic problems, cure all social ills, and bring about worldwide peace and prosperity simply by creating new federal programs. We must reject unlimited government and reassert the constitutional rule of law if we hope to halt the spending orgy. — Ron Paul

The Roaring Twenties were the period of that Great American Prosperity which was built on shaky foundations. — J. Paul Getty

At a time of change and challenge at home and abroad, these investments will enhance the security of Americans, assure the future American leadership, and help build the foundations of peace, stability, and prosperity in the years ahead. — Hillary Clinton

Any economic network is largely dependent on trust if it is to function well. As economists put it, a high degree of trust lowers the costs of transactions and compensates for a lack of information. According to the American philosopher Francis Fukuyama, trust is a key prerequisite for prosperity. — Daniel Ammann

Certainly, protecting oppressed people, stopping ethnic conflict and promoting responsible governance are worthy goals. But none is as important for American security and prosperity as keeping the peace in the Middle East, Europe and East Asia. — Michael Mandelbaum

Speaking as just simply an American who cares about the economic health of our country, I see one of the surest ways to bring wealth and prosperity to the country is to innovate in science and technology. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The American Dream is freedom, prosperity, peace-and liberty and justice for all. That's a big dream. It's not always easy to achieve, but that's the ideal. More than any country in history we've made gains toward a democracy that is enviable throughout the world. Dreams require perseverance if they are to be realized, and fortunately we're a hard-working country and people. We are the luckiest people in history, just by the fact that we are Americans. — Donald Trump

I believe as well that - that American strength is - is essential economic strength, family and value strength, military strength is essential for our own good that these things not only help secure peace for other people but preserve peace for us and - and promise greater prosperity for America. — Mitt Romney

American prosperity and American free enterprise are both highly unusual in the world, and we should not overlook the possibility that the two are connected. — Thomas Sowell

For the next century, the Republicans have agreed that we will promote the dignity and future of every individual by building a free society under a limited, accountable government that protects liberty, security and prosperity for a brighter American dream. — Todd Tiahrt

The idea of labor, of hard work, leading to increased productivity was so novel, so radical, in the overall span of Western history that most ordinary people, most of those who labored, could scarcely believe what was happening to them. Labor had been so long thought to be the natural and inevitable consequence of necessity and poverty that most people still associated it with slavery and servitude. Therefore any possibility of oppression, any threat to the colonists' hard earned prosperity, any hint of reducing them to the povery of other nations, was especially frightening; for it seemed likely to slide them back into the traditional status of servants or slaves, into the older world where labor was merely a painful necessity and not a source of prosperity. — Gordon S. Wood

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

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

To the European immigrant - that is, to the aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantages of American life - the Promise of America has consisted largely in the opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity. — Herbert Croly

President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas, and the direction America must take to build a 21st century version of the American Dream in a nation of shared opportunities, shared prosperity and shared responsibilities. — William J. Clinton

Do the American voters know that the unprecedented improvement in their standard of living that the last hundred years brought was the result of the steady rise in the per-head quota of capital invested? Do they realize that every measure leading to capital decumulation jeopardizes their prosperity? — Ludwig Von Mises

The American people want economic prosperity, high-quality goods and low prices, all of which I support. — John Linder

Pray a little more, work a little harder, save, wait, be patient and, most of all, live within our means. That's the American way. It's not spending ourselves into prosperity or taxing ourselves into prosperity. — Mike Huckabee

The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern ... American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity. — Julian Barnes

The American people know that we cannot spend our way to prosperity. — Geoff Davis

Obama's personality traits, coupled with his extreme-leftist agenda, make him particularly dangerous to the American ideal and to the preservation of our founding principles, as well as to the liberty and prosperity they guarantee. — David Limbaugh

The United States has never been afraid of a challenge. In times of crisis, it is American innovation and ingenuity that has forged the path to progress and prosperity. — Diana DeGette

The great flaw in the American economic system has finally been revealed: an unrealistic faith in the power of prosperity rather than in the ultimate power and benevolence of God. — Billy Graham

Learning from the American experience, governments around the world have developed national innovation policies and programs to accelerate their economic prosperity and to help their citizens and companies compete globally. — Robert Hormats

Corporations are a good thing. But corporations should not be running our government ... They have driven the American economy since its founding, and the prosperity of our country is largely dependent on the free operation of corporations. But some corporations don't want free markets, and they don't want democracy. They want profits. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

My leadership will end the Obama era and begin a new era of American prosperity. — Mitt Romney

I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within it, nowhere does she enjoy a higher station. And if anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women. — Alexis De Tocqueville

My mother is not smiling; Chinese do not smile for photographs. Their faces command relatives in foreign lands - 'Send money' - and prosperity for ever - 'Put food in front of this picture.' My mother does not understand Chinese- American snapshots. 'What are you laughing at?' she asks. (1983: 58) — Maxine Hong Kingston

I have an intense personal interest in making the use of American capital in the development of China an instrument for the promotion of the welfare of China, and an increase in her material prosperity without entanglements or creating embarrassment affecting the growth of her independent political power, and the preservation of her territorial integrity. — William Howard Taft

If you want a future of shared prosperity, where the middle class is growing and poverty is declining, where the American Dream is alive and well, and where the United States remains the leading force for peace and prosperity in a highly competitive world, you should vote for Barack Obama. — William J. Clinton

This whole theory [of John Law and Jean Terrasson], as dear to French financial schemers in the eighteenth century as to American " Greenbackers " in the nineteenth, had resulted, under the Orleans Regency and Louis XV, in ruin to France financially and morally, had culminated in the utter destruction of all prosperity, the rooting out of great numbers of the most important industries, and the grinding down of the working people even to starvation. — Andrew Dickson White

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. — Barack Obama

The president's priority is to protect the safety and security of the American people. That's the physical security of the American people as well as the prosperity of the American people. — John O. Brennan

The American free market system is the greatest engine for prosperity and opportunity that the world has ever seen. Freedom works. — Ted Cruz

Every measurement of where you have more public confidence in creating jobs, American prosperity, controlling crime, health care, providing education, all of these standards, Bill Clinton has considerably high marks. The sole exception is on protecting taxes, which is initially his attack. — Mark Shields

At the same time, old confrontations have taken on frightening urgency, especially the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir and the violent stalemate in the Middle East. Progress on these and other global challenges requires us to develop a larger strategy for American foreign policy, rooted in a fundamental commitment to move the world from interdependence to an integrated global community committed to peace and prosperity, freedom and security. — William J. Clinton

To say that certainly America was very lucky to get a large amount of land, and the native Indians were extremely unlucky to have white men coming over here, is one thing. But to say that the whole of the American prosperity was based on exploiting the indigenous population would be a great mistake. — Amartya Sen

The contemporary populist Right is a bastard child of corporate America, which has subsidized the Tea Party via front groups like American for Prosperity and the Club for Growth ever since the movement's beginning on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Its real, as opposed to stated, purpose was to distract and channel the inchoate popular longing for a change in the status quo... p 234 — Mike Lofgren

The most important difference between these early American families and our own is that early families constituted economic unitsin which all members, from young children on up, played important productive roles within the household. The prosperity of the whole family depended on how well husband, wife, and children could manage and cultivate the land. Children were essential to this family enterprise from age six or so until their twenties, when they left home. — Kenneth Keniston