America Quotes - Page 30

• Every U.S. citizen owes allegiance to our nation. Some Americans consider that anything less than high treason is allegiance.

  Cullen Hightower

  Citizens, Allegiance, Treason

  5 Copy quote

• The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power's sake but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy.

  Joan Didion

  Secret, Mobility, Sake

  Joan Didion (2013). “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”, p.57, Zola Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Americans still believe they are cut out to be successful-in everything: love, love-making, luck, luck-giving, money-making, sense-making, cancer-avoiding, clothes-wearing, car-driving, and so on.

  William Saroyan

  Cancer, Believe, Cutting

  William Saroyan (1968). “I used to believe I had forever, now I'm not so sure”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition--of intellectual activity, of letters--and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.

  James A. Baldwin

  Class, Choices, Intellectual

  4 Copy quote

• It is my duty to prevent, through the independence of Cuba, the U.S.A. from spreading over the West Indies and falling with addedweight upon other lands of Our America. All I have done up to now and shall do hereafter is to that end.... I know the Monster, because I have lived in its lair--and my weapon is only the slingshot of David.

  Jose Marti

  Fall, West Indies, Land

  91 Copy quote

• The future of America may or may not bring forth a black President, a woman President, a Jewish President, but it most certainly always will have a suburban President. A President whose senses have been defined by the suburbs, where lakes and public baths mutate into back yards and freeways, where walking means driving, where talking means telephoning, where watching means TV, and where living means real, imitation life.

  Arthur Kroker

  Real, Mean, Lakes

  4 Copy quote

• Johnny Cash was the champion of the voiceless, the underdogs and the
  downtrodden. He was also something of a holy terror, like Abraham Lincoln
  with a wild side. He represented the best of America.

  Kris Kristofferson

  Art, Wild Side, Champion

  38 Copy quote

• The East is the hearthside of America. Like any home, therefore, it has the defects of its virtues. Because it is a long-lived-inhouse, it bursts its seams, is inconvenient, needs constant refurbishing. And some of the family resources have been spent. To attain the privacy that grown-up people find so desirable, Easterners live a harder life than people elsewhere. Today it is we and not the frontiersman who must be rugged to survive.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Home, Heart, Long

  10 Copy quote

• Real feminism is spinsterhood. It's time America admitted that old maids give all women a good name.

  Florence King

  Real, Women, Names

  Florence King (1990). “Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye”, p.47, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of life's intriguing paradoxes is that hierarchical social order makes cheap rents and outré artists' colonies possible. Raffish bohemian neighborhoods flourished in the days of racial segregation; under integration the artistic poor have no safe places in which to create.... If America lacks a vigorous culture it is partly because studios and ateliers have become crack houses.

  Florence King

  Artist, Order, House

  7 Copy quote

• The treasures of Cathay were never found.
  In this America, this wilderness
  Where the axe echoes with a lonely sound,
  The generations labor to possess
  And grave by grave we civilize the ground.

  Louis Simpson

  Lonely, Echoes, Discovery

  Louis Simpson (2003). “The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems, 1940-2001”, p.124, BOA Editions, Ltd.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• From the American newspapers you'd think America was populated solely by naked women and cinema stars.

  Nancy Astor

  Stars, Thinking, Naked

  14 Copy quote

• No one in this country has any root anywhere; we don't live in America, we board here, we are like spiders that run over the surface of the water.

  Van Wyck Brooks

  Running, Country, Roots

  Van Wyck Brooks (1961). “From the Shadow of the Mountain: My Post-meridian Years”, New York : E.P. Dutton

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our country was born out of a desire to be free. And every day since, it's been protected by our men and women in uniform - people who believed so deeply in America, they were willing to give their lives for it.

  Barack Obama

  Leadership, Country, Father

  FaceBook post by Barack Obama from May 24, 2014

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We Americans are not an inherently more violent people than folks in other countries. We're not inherently more prone to mental health problems. The main difference that sets our nation apart is what makes us so susceptible to so many mass shootings is that we don't do enough, we don't take the basic commonsense actions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. What's different in America is it's easy to get your hands on a gun.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Gun, Mass Shootings

  "CNN Newsroom" with Rosa Flores, www.cnn.com. September 22, 2013.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• We don't believe in a small America. We believe in a big America - a tolerant America, a just America, an equal America - that values the service of every patriot.

  Barack Obama

  Believe, Community, Patriot

  Remarks by the President at the Human Rights Campaign's Annual National Dinner, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. October 1, 2011.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't think the United States needs superpatriots. We need patriotism, honestly practiced by all of us, and we don't need these people that are more patriotic than you or anyone else.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Patriotic, Thinking, People

  6 Copy quote

• The Negro was invented in America.

  John Oliver Killens

  11 Copy quote

• I believe the US is a truly monstrous force in the world, now off the leash for obvious reasons.

  Harold Pinter

  Believe, World, Reason

  9 Copy quote

• Every gathering of Americans-whether a few on the porch of a crossroads store or massed thousands in a great stadium-is the possessor of a potentially immeasurable influence on the future.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Gathering, Influence, Crossroads

  15 Copy quote

• This is a time of great challenges for America, and I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation.

  Mitt Romney

  Successful, Challenges, President

  "Mitt Romney's concession speech - full text". www.theguardian.com. November 7, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as 'Communists' or 'Fascists' by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.

  Margaret Chase Smith

  Tired, Sick, People

  Declaration of Conscience, delivered 1 June 1950

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• Can a free people restrain crime without sacrificing fundamental liberties and a heritage of compassion?... Let us show that we can temper together those opposite elements of liberty and restraint into one consistent whole. Let us set an example for the world of a law-abiding America glorying in its freedom as well as its respect for law.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Freedom, Sacrifice, Compassion

  Gerald R. Ford's Address at Yale Law School's 150th anniversary, www.presidency.ucsb.edu. April 25, 1975.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I first went to America in 1928, there were spittoons everywhere. I remember avoiding spit as it flew past me in Times Square. Very unattractive.

  John Gielgud

  Past, Squares, Firsts

  11 Copy quote

• The genius of America is production; and a large percentage of our productive enterprises are headed by men who have come up from the worker's bench.

  William S. Knudsen

  Men, Genius, Benches

  6 Copy quote