Quotes About America

I observed that equality of condition, though it has not there reached the extreme limit which it seems to have attained in the United States, is constantly approaching it; and that the democracy which governs the American communities appears to be rapidly rising into power in Europe.

The European generally submits to a public officer because he represents a superior force; but to an American he represents a right. In America it may be said that no one renders obedience to man, but to justice and to law.

The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated.

In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes...

In no country in the world does the law hold so absolute a language as in America, and in no country is the right of applying it vested in so many hands.

In America the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever steps beyond them.

In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country.

The great advantage of the Americans is, that they have arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution; and that they are born equal, instead of becoming so.

Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions.

this difference lies in the simple fact that the Americans have acknowledged the right of the judges to found their decisions on the constitution rather than on the laws.

I do not think that there is a single country in the world where, in proportion to the population, there are so few ignorant and, at the same time, so few educated individuals as in America.

One must go to America to understand what power material well-being exerts on political actions and even on opinions themselves, which ought to be subject only to reason.

Americans often change their laws, but the foundation of the Constitution is respected.

Thus whilst the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust.

Exceptional physical conditions, private interest, religion, in that it puts a brake on the inordinate taste for material wealth—these are, from the first weeks of the American journey, the three elements that profoundly marked Tocqueville's arguments.

Parties are a necessary evil in free governments. . . . America has . . . lost the great parties which once divided the nation; and if her happiness is considerably increased, her morality has suffered by their extinction.

In America, as in France, [the press] constitutes a singular power, so strangely composed of mingled good and evil that it is at the same time indispensable to the existence of freedom, and nearly incompatible with the maintenance of public order.

America the only country in which the starting-point of a great people has been clearly observable

Germans Francis Grund, and Francis Lieber, and the Pole Adam G. de Gurowski all wrote about the striking social equality they found in America, the absence of differences in status. They all noted the American obsession with work and the restless quest for the "almighty dollar."18

that at the conference in Evian as far back as 1938, thirty-two countries in the League of Nations had voted not to help Jewish refugees fleeing Germany? Even America had refused to accept 20,000 endangered refugee children.

Did they not know that at the conference in Evian as far back as 1938, thirty-two countries in the League of Nations had voted not to help Jewish refugees fleeing Germany? Even America had refused to accept 20,000 endangered refugee children.

Why aren't you happy in America, if everyone there drives motorcars?

I saw everything fresh, and with wonder that I was in America at all. If a white person was rude I simply turned and stared. I never acknowledged the system that sanctioned rude behavior, but always responded directly to the person. How uncivilly you have been brought up! was the message of my stare.

When our revolution became very severe with killing in street and hostage in Emrika embassy, it made afraid all Emrika. Even it made afraid many Iranian...Emrika did think: Iran became cray! But really Iranian was same people, only difference, we have some fanatic with power. Everyone else same.