American Quotations : Browse our extensive collection of American quotations, American Sayings and
Thoughts.
America
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks ... It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.
-Samuel Adams
In the United States today, we have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism.
-Spiro T. Agnew
The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.
-J. G. Ballard, interview in Métaphors, no. 7, 1983
In America, if you put your mind to it you can have anything you want. You just can't have everything you want.
-Bernard Baruch
Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers—and in people’s minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.
-Jean Baudrillard, “Utopia Achieved” America (1986, trans. 1988)
In America there are two classes of travel: first class and with childen.
-Robert Benchley
"For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting."
-Robert Benchley, Benchley -- or Else!
The spirit is at home, if not entirely satisfied, in America.
-Allan Bloom
Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We've been so busy damning ourselves for years. We've done it all, and yet we don't take credit for it.
-Ray Bradbury
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
Americans are just beginning to regard food the way the French always have. Dinner is not what you do in the evening before something else. Dinner is the evening.
-Art Buchwald
The story of America is the story of expanding liberty: an ever-widening circle, constantly growing to reach further and include more. Our nation's founding commitment is still our deepest commitment: In our world, and here at home, we will extend the frontiers of freedom.
-George W. Bush, Remarks at the 2004 Republican National Convention
This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain, plateau. The country was still waiting to be made into a landscape.
-Willa Cather
"The British have been more up for it than the Americans were, particularly with respect to nudity in the show. In Europe there are adverts that show the breasts, so people are less frightened of that aspect of the show. Americans can withstand incredible violence on TV shows - which, as I come from England and Canada, I find difficult to stomach - but they are more puritanical when it comes to nudity on screen."
-Kim Cattrall, "Sunday Express magazine"
“This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something. Here’s a place to build a home. . . It’s the idea that we all have value, you and me . . .”
-Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
It's fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their vocational education often has to be learned all over again after they leave school and college. On the other hand, they have open quick minds and if their education has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of a more rigid training.
-Raymond Chandler
Three quarters of the American population literally believe in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in resurrection, in God doing this and that -- it's astonishing. These numbers aren't duplicated anywhere else in the industrial world. You'd have to maybe go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American population.
-Noam Chomsky
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.
-Sir Winston Churchill
America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still.
-e. e. (Edward Estlin) cummings
The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.
-Robertson Davies
-Samuel Adams
In the United States today, we have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism.
-Spiro T. Agnew
The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.
-J. G. Ballard, interview in Métaphors, no. 7, 1983
In America, if you put your mind to it you can have anything you want. You just can't have everything you want.
-Bernard Baruch
Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers—and in people’s minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.
-Jean Baudrillard, “Utopia Achieved” America (1986, trans. 1988)
In America there are two classes of travel: first class and with childen.
-Robert Benchley
"For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting."
-Robert Benchley, Benchley -- or Else!
The spirit is at home, if not entirely satisfied, in America.
-Allan Bloom
Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We've been so busy damning ourselves for years. We've done it all, and yet we don't take credit for it.
-Ray Bradbury
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
Americans are just beginning to regard food the way the French always have. Dinner is not what you do in the evening before something else. Dinner is the evening.
-Art Buchwald
The story of America is the story of expanding liberty: an ever-widening circle, constantly growing to reach further and include more. Our nation's founding commitment is still our deepest commitment: In our world, and here at home, we will extend the frontiers of freedom.
-George W. Bush, Remarks at the 2004 Republican National Convention
This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain, plateau. The country was still waiting to be made into a landscape.
-Willa Cather
"The British have been more up for it than the Americans were, particularly with respect to nudity in the show. In Europe there are adverts that show the breasts, so people are less frightened of that aspect of the show. Americans can withstand incredible violence on TV shows - which, as I come from England and Canada, I find difficult to stomach - but they are more puritanical when it comes to nudity on screen."
-Kim Cattrall, "Sunday Express magazine"
“This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something. Here’s a place to build a home. . . It’s the idea that we all have value, you and me . . .”
-Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
It's fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their vocational education often has to be learned all over again after they leave school and college. On the other hand, they have open quick minds and if their education has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of a more rigid training.
-Raymond Chandler
Three quarters of the American population literally believe in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in resurrection, in God doing this and that -- it's astonishing. These numbers aren't duplicated anywhere else in the industrial world. You'd have to maybe go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American population.
-Noam Chomsky
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.
-Sir Winston Churchill
America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still.
-e. e. (Edward Estlin) cummings
The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.
-Robertson Davies