Quotes About America

America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.

America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies.

Abbot E. Smith, an authority on the subject, estimates that 'not less than a half, nor more than two-thirds, of all white immigrants to the colonies were indentured servants or redemptioners or convicts,' and that, beginning in 1728, 'by far the greatest number of servants and redemptioners' came from Ireland. It would seem, therefore, that more than one hundred thousand Scotch-Irish came to America as indentured servants.

The cross can heal and hurt; it can be empowering and liberating but also enslaving and oppressive. There is no one way in which the cross can be interpreted. I offer my reflections because I believe that the cross placed alongside the lynching tree can help us to see Jesus in America in a new light, and thereby empower people who claim to follow him to take a stand against white supremacy and every kind of injustice.

Living in the fifties America was in many ways like living in a public space that's suddenly emptied out, a theater after closing, or a classroom after school. The emptiness could feel liberating, but it could also make you feel blank and vaguely nostalgic.

Hariot would make a detailed record of the New World in writing, and White would undertake a series of illustrations and paintings. Together they would be Ralegh's ears and eyes in America.

HAVING ASSEMBLED the men who would plan and take part in his expeditions to America, Ralegh's next task was to determine where a colony should be located and what kind of settlement it would be.

Where did Wayne Newton go when the USA went to shit? I was more stoned than I had realized.

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.

If it hadn't been for the Cold War, neither Russia nor America would have been sending people into space.

The United States has usually prepared for its wars after getting into them. Never was this more true than in the Civil War.

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the people of other countries, whose leaders are afraid to trust them with arms.

What can be more reasonable than that when crowds of them [immigrants] come here, they should be forced to renounce everything contrary to the spirit of the Constitution[?]

It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. . . . The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much, soon to forget it. . . .

In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example and France has followed it, of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history and the most consoling presage of its happiness.

It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than War, War is better than tribute.

My parents were nonmaterialistic. They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of poverty in America, and over the years they were proven right.

Asking a question whose echo has been heard each time America went to war since, Goldman said, "How else is the world to take America seriously when democracy at home is daily being outraged, free speech suppressed, and peaceable assemblies broken up by overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform?

Goldman laid low until the 1927 executions of anarchists and convicted bank robbers Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti stirred her back into action. With the support of admirers such as novelist Theodore Dreiser and philanthropist Peggy Guggenheim, Goldman began to write her memoirs as a way to reach the public in America. If she could not reach its shores, at least her words could.

I'm on the board of a national group called Faith in America. It's designed to fight religious-based bigotry.

America is a nation with many flaws, but hopes so vast that only the cowardly would refuse to acknowledge them.

The American continents… are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

Our country may be likened to a new house. We lack many things, but we possess the most precious of all - liberty!

We didn't start this war - the right wing did. We're tired of seeing good-paying jobs shipped overseas. This fight is about the economy, it's about jobs and it's about rebuilding America.