Quotes About American

The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly.

The high office of the President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American's freedom and before I leave office, I must inform the citizen of this plight.

The quality of American life must keep pace with the quantity of American goods. This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.

I tossed my shoulders and swaggered away, whistling with pleasure. In the gutter I saw a long cigaret butt. I picked it up without shame, lit it as I stood with one foot in the gutter, puffed it and exhaled toward the stars. I was an American, and goddamn proud of it.

Wanting to change only the British position at the top of the American social structure, John Adams feared that a "rage for innovation" would consume what was worthwhile about American culture.

The surface causes of Adams's anxieties are not difficult to discern. Every activist knew the penalty for treason. Every congressman knew that prison, perhaps death, would be his reward if the American rebellion failed.

Alexander Hamilton reflected as early as the middle of the Revolutionary War that rallying at the last minute was part of the national character of his countrymen.

The new frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises-it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not their pocketbook-it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.

The right to a trial is a core principle of the American legal system. Depriving Americans of these essential liberties undermines the Constitution while doing nothing to strengthen our national security.

Corporations cast American jobs to the sweatshops of Asia hollowing out the earning capacity of the American middle classes.

If money, education, and honesty will not bring to me as much privilege, as much equality as they bring to any American citizen, then they are to me a curse, and not a blessing.

In 1913 and 1920 California enacted "alien land laws" aimed at Japanese American farmers, essentially barring them from purchasing and leasing agricultural land. The Japanese Americans, however, found

Descendants of European immigrants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have largely assimilated into U.S. society. Groups once viewed as outsiders now view themselves, and are viewed by others, as part of the American mainstream.

American intelligence officers, somewhat better informed than the Duce, understood that for the projected invasion to be successful it was vitally important to have the Mafia firmly on the Allied side.

I defy any man to be a pessimist on the subject of American character after a season or two on the lecture platform; provided of course that he is a reasonably sympathetic man, and is so constituted in matters social that he is what the politicians call a "good mixer."

Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.

Workers have kept faith in American institutions. Most of the conflicts, which have occurred have been when labor's right to live has been challenged and denied.

In the next 25 years, we will see a 100 percent increase in the number of American retirees. The number of workers, however, will increase by only 15 percent. Given those numbers, how can these programs survive? Under our current tax code, these programs can be maintained only by increasing the tax on those who work, reducing benefits for those who have retired or by increasing the age of retirement.

mine is the only photograph of an American actor to grace the walls of the Actors' Bar at The Dirty Duck.

My great hero was that archetype of cheerful American normalcy, Norman Rockwell.

In the United States, no government, institution, or philanthropist even began to approach a similar level of support. As the Hopkins medical school was opening, American theological schools enjoyed endowments of $18 million, while medical school endowments totaled $500,000.

Part of the American myth is that people who are handed the skin of a dead sheep at graduating time think that it will keep their minds alive forever.

At a newsstand, Owen read a German newspaper while Vivie and I paged through the Hungarian fashion magazines, and discussed how the models looked less tormented than models in American magazines. "Maybe it's like how, in cultures where everyone is starving, the standard of beauty is less skinny," Vivie said. We both looked for a moment at the confident Hungarian women, each of whom knew tens of thousands of the words closest to Ivan.

Wasn't that how people in other countries viewed all American people—with their innocence, their Disney, their inability to drive stick shift? With the way they were protected—the way I was protected—from so much of the "reality" that happened elsewhere?