The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It’s a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.
You can’t have a university without having free speech, even though at times it makes us terribly uncomfortable. If students are not going to hear controversial ideas on college campuses, they’re not going to hear them in America. I believe it’s part of their education.
America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
America has much greatness left in her.
We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote.
Through Black Lives Matter and social media, we’ve been able to have a really challenging discussion with America about police and how much it is investing in policing.
If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.
The military is not a social experiment. The purpose of the military is kill people and break things. It’s not to transform the culture by trying out some ideas that some people think would make us a different country and more diverse. The purpose is to protect America.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
The good fortune of America is closely tied to the good fortune of all humanity.
The two lines from ‘Roots’ that stick out to me are, ‘You no more in Africa. You in America now,’ and what I said after Kunta escaped: ‘What is it like to be free, Kunta? It must be something.’
During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba.
In 1492, the natives discovered they were Indians; they discovered they lived in America.
I’m a simple man with a simple mind. I hold a simple set of beliefs that I live by. Number one, I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there. I feel that it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and I strongly believe it has 50 states.
Are my politics Democrat or Republican? I think both are horrific. And it doesn’t matter anyway. Money runs America; money runs everywhere.
America has swerved from its ethical center.
Laughter is America’s most important export.
We’re not going to have the America that we want until we elect leaders who are going to tell the truth – not most days, but every day.
I always see America as really belonging to the Native Americans. Even though I’m American, I still feel like a visitor in my own country.
America’s real business leaders understand unless or until the middle class regains its footing and its faith, capitalism remains vulnerable.
In America, we must always place constitutional values over authoritarian control.
America wants its respect.
I never took guitar lessons. I took classical piano lessons from the age of six when we lived in Holland. And when we moved to America, it was just the typical thing except I was really good at it; so was my brother.
The other aspect of American identity worth focusing on is the concept of America as a nation of immigrants. That certainly is a partial truth. But it is often assumed to be the total truth.
We have very pretty Dutch gardens, so called, in America, but their chief claim to being Dutch is that they are set with bulbs, and have Delft or other earthen pots or boxes for formal plants or shrubs.
America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.
No matter the nationality, no matter the religion, no matter the ethnic background, America brings out the best in people.
Here in America we’re doing the most wonderful crafts.
America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.
We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.
In addition to needed gun control reforms, America urgently needs a stronger protest movement dedicated to reducing the glorification of violence in our culture – in music, film, television, video games, and even the Internet.
I was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and I moved to Anderson, Indiana, in 2003 to go to school. I finished high school in America, then I went to college.
The government of the United States doesn’t want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war. It wants peace, but what’s happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? Palestine? What’s happening? What’s happened over the last hundred years in Latin America and in the world?
America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.
What is going on in America is extreme. The youth cult, they worship youth so much it’s almost paranoid. And LA is the Mecca of it all; they’re taking it to the hilt.
Now, as a nation, we don’t promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That’s an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.
The lesson of 9/11 is that America is truly exceptional. We withstood the worst attack of our history, intended by our enemies to destroy us. Instead, it drew us closer and made us more united. Our love for freedom and one another has given us a strength that surprised even ourselves.
Identity in America is complicated but it’s also simple: it’s about whom you identify with and who identifies with you.
Beto’s copy of the Bill of Rights goes from one to three. Mine includes the Second Amendment. But there are a whole host of people here in Washington… they would be happy to confiscate America’s guns. And if you don’t believe that, then you probably also still believe in Bigfoot.
Is woman a religion? Well, perhaps you will have the chance of judging for yourselves if you go to America. There you will find men treating women with just the same respect formerly accorded only to religious dignitaries or to great nobles.
When I say ‘hip-hop is dead,’ basically, America is dead. There is no political voice. Music is dead.
Our forefathers paved the way for us. Let’s take their values and their strengths and rededicate ourselves to doing whatever it takes to keep America the greatest country in the history of man.
Since belief determines behavior, doesn’t it make sense that we should be teaching ethical, moral values in every home and in every school in America?
America is my country and Paris is my hometown.
On July 26, 1916, I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language, and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.
I suggest that those groups whose culture and values stress delayed gratification – education, hard work, success, and ambition – are those groups that succeed in America, regardless of discrimination.
The people who despise America are the editors of the ‘New Statesman.’ Their green-card applications must have been turned down.
We are a country where people of all backgrounds, all nations of origin, all languages, all religions, all races, can make a home. America was built by immigrants.
I feel like we have so much to add to this book called the American Dream, and I want to add our chapter to it. I want to talk about what it means to be brown American and this concept of what I feel is the New Brown America.
Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don’t need to imagine it. It’s called the United States of America.
I think it’s too easy often to find a villain out of the headlines and to then repeat that villainy again and again and again. You know, traditionally, America has always looked to scapegoat someone as the boogie man.
A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media, which is our culture. Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.
An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.
The only things that the United States has given to the world are skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails. That is all. And in Cuba, in our America, they make much better cocktails.
I think I would have done very well as a writer in the Forties. I think the last time America was a great country was then or not long after. It was before Vietnam, before Watergate.
I am not Jewish, but I think that America invented nothing so fine as deli food.
I want history to remember me… not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be herself. I want to be remembered as a catalyst for change in America.
