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Alexis de Tocqueville5 quotes
Religious insanity is very common in the United States. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, as either a principal or accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do; this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men, and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. The idea of novelty is there indissolubly connected with the idea of amelioration. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world, which seem to tend towards the same end, although they started from different points; I allude to the Russians and the Americans... Their starting point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840John Updike3 quotes
Without the cold war, what's the point of being an American? — John Updike · 1990America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy. — John Updike · 1972Some sense of religious mission is part of being American. — John Updike · 1996Ronald Reagan3 quotes
We're too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We're not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. — Ronald Reagan · 1981When the first President, George Washington, placed his hand upon the Bible, he stood less than a single day's journey by horseback from raw, untamed wilderness. There were 4 million Americans in a union of 13 States. Today, we are 60 times as many in a union of 50 States. We've lighted the world with our inventions, gone to the aid of mankind wherever in the world there was a cry for help, journeyed to the Moon and safely returned. So much has changed, and yet we stand together as we did two centuries ago. — Ronald Reagan · 1985And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was 8 years ago. But more than that: After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home. — Ronald Reagan · 1989Thomas Paine3 quotes
The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. — Thomas Paine · 1776Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind. — Thomas Paine · 1776Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them. — Thomas Paine · 1776J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur2 quotes
There is room for everybody in America; has he any particular talent or industry? He exerts it in order to procure a livelihood, and it succeeds. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur · 1782Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur · 1782Jimmy Carter2 quotes
We have the heaviest concentration of lawyers on Earth-1 for every 500 Americans, three times as many as are in England, four times as many as are in West Germany, twenty-one times as many as are in West Germany, twenty-one times as many as there are in Japan. We have more litigation, but I am not sure that we have more justice. No resources of talent and training in our own society, even including the medical care, is more wastefully or unfairly distributed than legal skills. Ninety percent of our lawyer serves 10 percent of our people. We are over-lawyered and under-represented. — Jimmy Carter · 1978Our Nation can be strong abroad only if it is strong at home. And we know that the best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation. — Jimmy Carter · 1977John Brown2 quotes
This is a beautiful country. — John Brown · 1859I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. — John Brown · 1859Langston Hughes2 quotes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how
beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America. — Langston Hughes · 1926O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free. — Langston Hughes · 1936Richard Nixon2 quotes
Let us be proud that our system has produced and provided more freedom and more abundance, more widely shared, than any system in the history of the world. — Richard Nixon · 1973Our children have been taught to be ashamed of their country, ashamed of their parents, ashamed of America's record at home and of its role in the world. At every turn, we have been beset by those who find everything wrong with America and little that is right. But I am confident that this will not be the judgment of history on these remarkable times in which we are privileged to live. — Richard Nixon · 1973Stephen Vincent Benet2 quotes
I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp, gaunt names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat. — Stephen Vincent Benet · 1927I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse,
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmédy.
I shall not be there, I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. — Stephen Vincent Benet · 1927Walt Whitman2 quotes
America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without. — Walt Whitman · 1871The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. — Walt Whitman · 1855Abraham Lincoln1 quote
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. — Abraham Lincoln · 1838Allen Ginsberg1 quote
America, I've given you all and now I'm nothing. — Allen Ginsberg · 1956Amerigo Bonasera1 quote
I believe in America. — Amerigo Bonasera · 1972Anita1 quote
I like to be in America,
OK by me in America,
Everything free in America. — Anita · 1961Arthur Charles Erickson1 quote
North American civilization is one of the ugliest to have emerged in human history, and it has engulfed the world. Asphalt and exhaust fumes clog the villages... This great, though disastrous, culture can only change as we begin to stand off and see... The inveterate materialism which has become the model for cultures around the globe. — Arthur Charles Erickson · 1973Barack Obama1 quote
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. — Barack Obama · 2009Charles Kuralt1 quote
Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything. — Charles Kuralt · 1990Edward VIII1 quote
The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children. — Edward VIII · 1957Emma Lazarus1 quote
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door! — Emma Lazarus · 1883F. Scott Fitzgerald1 quote
There are no second acts in American lives. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1940Franklin D. Roosevelt1 quote
All of our people all over the country-except the pure-blooded Indians-are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, including even those who came over here on the Mayflower. — Franklin D. Roosevelt · 1944Frederick Douglass1 quote
The destiny of the colored American…is the destiny of America. — Frederick Douglass · 1862George Hanson1 quote
You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it. — George Hanson · 1969George W. Bush1 quote
We have a place, all of us, in a long story—a story we continue, but whose end we will not see. It is the story of a new world that became a friend and liberator of the old, the story of a slave-holding society that became a servant of freedom, the story of a power that went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer. It is the American story—a story of flawed and fallible people, united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals. — George W. Bush · 2001H. Rap Brown1 quote
I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America's culture. It is as American as cherry pie. — H. Rap Brown · 1967Henry Box Brown1 quote
I entered the world a slave-in the midst of a country whose most honoured writings declare that all men have a right to liberty. — Henry Box Brown · 1849Henry Cabot Lodge1 quote
Let us have done with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German-Americans, and so on, and all be Americans... If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description. — Henry Cabot Lodge · 1888Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1 quote
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 1850