America Quotes

In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.

Gertrude Stein, The Geographical History of America (1936)

There are only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing.

Herbert Clark Hoove

The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not make.

Dan Quayle

You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.

Harry S Truman

I think that the Communist Party as a political organization is of no danger to the United States. It has no following and has been disregarded by the American people for many, many years.

Robert F. Kennedy, "A Thousand Days, " by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. [1965]

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July I answer A day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustices and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

Frederick Douglas

Unique among the nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly and eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king but Jesus.

John Ashcroft

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

Georges Clemenceau

Contemporary American children, if they are old enough to grasp the concept of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December 15th.

Roy Blount Jr.

Intellectually, I know that America is no better than any other country emotionally I know she is better than every other country.

Sinclair Lewis

America is closer to the year 2 than anywhere else on earth.

David Frost

The AIDS epidemic has rolled back a big rotting log and revealed all the squirming life underneath it, since it involves, all at once, the main themes of our existence sex, death, power, money, love, hate, disease and panic. No American phenomenon has been so compelling since the Vietnam War.

Edmund White

Just what is it that America stands for If she stands for one thing more than another it is for the sovereignty of self - Governing people.

Woodrow Wilson

During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.

Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

The American experience stirred mankind from discovery to exploration, from the cautious quest for what they knew or what they thought they knew was out there, to an enthusiastic reaching to the unknown.

Daniel J. Boorstin

They do not leave home without American Express. ... Blame the moral carelessness that parents pass off as the gift of freedom as they cut their children loose like colorful kites and wish them an exciting flight.

Roger Rosenblatt

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

H. L. Mencken

We are capable of destroying America and breaking its nose.

Muammar Qaddafi

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you - - Ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday... The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.

Ayn Rand

Let us talk sense to the American people. Let us tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains.

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. On succeeding Richard M Nixon as president.

Gerald R. Ford

America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.

Louis D. Brandeis

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

Mark Twain

A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt. He said, I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one. The grandson asked him, Which wolf will win the fight in your heart? The grandfather answered, The one I feed.

Anonymous, As told in Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.

Gore Vidal

Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered. For the American citadel is a man. Not man in general. Not man in the abstract. Not the majority of men. But man. That man. His worth. His uniqueness.

Archibald MacLeish

Americans are overreachers; overreaching is the most admirable of the many American excesses.

George F. Will, Statecraft as Soulcraft

There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.

Judith Martin, (Miss Manners)

My fellow Americans, I must speak to you tonight about a mounting danger in Central America that threatens the security of the United States. This danger will not go away it will grow worse, much worse, if we fail to take action now.

Ronald Reagan

Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

Gore Vidal, The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1993

The role of the teacher remains the highest calling of a free people. To the teacher, America entrusts her most precious resource, her children and asks that they be prepared... to face the rigors of individual participation in a democratic society.

Shirley Mount Hufstedle

America has begun a spiritual reawakening. Faith and hope are being restored. Americans are turning back to God. Church attendance is up. Audiences for religious books and broadcasts are growing. And I do believe that he has begun to heal our blessed land.

President Ronald Reagan, to the National Association of Evangelicals, Columbus, Ohio

Yale is a crucible in American life for the accommodation of intellectual achievement, of wisdom, of refinement, with the democratic ideals of openness, of social justice and of equal opportunity.

Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.

The 100% American is 99% an idiot.

George Bernard Shaw

The American sign of civic progress is to tear down the familiar and erect the monstrous.

Shane Leslie

There is a homely old adage which runs Speak softly and carry a big stick you will go far. If the American nation will speak softly, and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.

Theodore Roosevelt