AMERICA QUOTES III
quotations about America
I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum.
WYNDHAM LEWIS
"The Case Against Roots", America and Cosmic Man
The English Constitution, in a word, is framed on the principle of choosing a single sovereign authority, and making it good; the American, upon the principle of having many sovereign authorities, and hoping that their multitude may atone for their inferiority.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. The turkey is a much more respectable bird.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
letter to Sarah Bache, Jan. 26, 1784
The English Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but America, they were building.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"New England Two Centuries Ago", The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose
Never content just to be, America is also obliged to mean; America signifies, hence its constant and riveting vulnerability to illusion.
MARTIN AMIS
"Phantom of the Opera: The Republicans in 1988", Visiting Mr. Nabokov and Other Excursions
The truth is, everything we know about America, everything Americans come to know about being American, isn't from the news. I live there. We don't go home at the end of the day and think, "Well, I really know who I am now because the Wall Street Journal says that the Stock Exchange closed at this many points." What we know about how to be who we are comes from stories. It comes from the novels, the movies, the fashion magazines. It comes from popular culture.
CHRIS ABANI
"Chris Abani on the stories of Africa", TED conference
What joins the Americans one to another is not a common ancestry, language or race, but a shared work of the imagination that looks forward to the making of a future, not backward to the insignia of the past. Their enterprise is underwritten by a Constitution that allows for the widest horizons of sight and the broadest range of expression, supports the liberties of the people as opposed to the ambitions of the state, and stands as premise for a narrative rather than plan for an invasion or a monument. The narrative was always plural; not one story, many stories.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
"Them", Lapham's Quarterly: Foreigners, winter 2014
Well, America is never a laughingstock because it's too powerful for that. But people do want clarity and consistency.
TONY BLAIR
interview, Politico, September 25, 2017
Some of us grew up in households, for example, hearing that America is always right and never makes a mistake in the world. Others of us grew up in families that were so critical of America that the country was always described as a bully or an oppressor. In both cases, if we want to grow up to be free, we will have to unlearn the simple half-truths we were taught and develop the discernment to decide for ourselves when America's actions at home and abroad are virtuous--and when they are not. Always praising America is not patriotism. It is idolatry. But always criticizing America is not patriotism, either. It is ingratitude. The former is blind to America's faults; the latter is blind to America's virtues.
MARK GERZON
The Reunited States of America: How We Can Bridge the Partisan Divide
I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp, gaunt names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
"American Names"
American's greatest deficit is no longer found in the federal budget. It is a moral deficit, and it may be found in a polluted and poisoned culture that has become the great enemy within.
PAT BUCHANAN
speech, Mar. 2, 1999
We're entering our third century now, but it's wrong to judge our nation by its years. The calendar can't measure America because we were meant to be an endless experiment in freedom -- with no limit to our reaches, no boundaries to what we can do, no end point to our hopes. The United States Constitution is the impassioned and inspired vehicle by which we travel through history. It grew out of the most fundamental inspiration of our existence: that we are here to serve Him by living free -- that living free releases in us the noblest of impulses and the best of our abilities; that we would use these gifts for good and generous purposes and would secure them not just for ourselves and for our children but for all mankind.
RONALD REAGAN
State of the Union Address, Jan. 27, 1987
We must face the bitter fact that we have forsaken our great dream of a life of, for, and by the people; that the burning passions and ideals of the American dream lie congealed by cold cynicism. Great parts of the masses of our people no longer believe that they have a voice or a hand in shaping the destiny of this nation. They have not forsaken democracy because of any desire or positive action of their own; they have been driven down into the depths of a great despair born of frustration, hopelessness, and apathy. A democracy lacking in popular participation dies of paralysis.
SAUL ALINSKY
Reveille for Radicals
This is America and I'll make as much noise as I want so just shut your own mouth.
GARRISON KEILLOR
Liberty: A Novel of Lake Wobegon
Look, America is no more a democracy than Russia is a Communist state. The governments of the U.S. and Russia are practically the same. There's only a difference of degree. We both have the same basic form of government: economic totalitarianism. In other words, the settlement to all questions, the solutions to all issues are determined not by what will make the people most healthy and happy in their bodies and their minds but by economics. Dollars or rubles.
TOM ROBBINS
Another Roadside Attraction
I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.
JOHN ADAMS
Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law, Boston Gazette, Aug. 1765
Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
GORE VIDAL
Screening History
America has seen tough times before. We've always known how to get through them. And we've always believed our best days are ahead of us. I believe that still. But we must rise to the occasion, as we always have; change what must be changed; and make the future better than the past.
JOHN MCCAIN
speech, Jun. 3, 2008
Surely they knew that the very idea of the future came in an American box -- complete with instructions for assembling a Constitution, a MacDonald's hamburger franchise, a row of Marriot hotels and a First Amendment.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Money and Class in America
Of course, I must say that I don't think America is God's gift to anybody -- if it is, God's days have got to be numbered.
JAMES BALDWIN
If Beale Street Could Talk