American Character Quotes

• I think the level of casualties is secondary... [A]ll the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war... What we hate is not casualties but losing.

  Michael A. Ledeen

  Hate, War, Character

  15 Copy quote

• To watch an American on a beach, or crowding into a subway, or buying a theatre ticket, or sitting at home with his radio on, tells you something about one aspect of the American character: the capacity to withstand a great deal of outside interference, so to speak; a willing acceptance of frenzy which, though it's never self-conscious, amounts to a willingness to let other people have and assert their own lively, and even offensive, character. They are a tough race in this.

  Alistair Cooke

  Beach, Character, Home

  "Letter from America, 1946-2004".

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted . . . . If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws.

  Noah Webster

  Happiness, Failure, Men

  Noah Webster (1835). “Instructive and Entertaining Lessons for Youth: With Rules for Reading with Propriety, Illustrated by Examples: Designed for Use in Schools and Families”, p.230

  204 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we are to give our utmost effort and skill and enthusiasm, we must believe in ourselves, which means believing in our past and in our future, in our parents and in our children, in that particular blend of moral purpose and practical inventiveness which is the American character.

  Margaret Mead

  Children, Believe, Character

  "And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America". Book by Margaret Mead, 1942.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

  Stevie Wonder

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  311 Copy quote

• Look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Dream, Kings, Kids

  61 Copy quote

• It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Character, America, Desperate

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.85, Rowman & Littlefield

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• that strange conflict in the American character: we pride ourselves on being the melting pot of the world but we insist on regarding most immigrants with suspicion.

  Gene Tierney

  Character, Pride, Melting

  Gene Tierney, Mickey Herskowitz (1979). “Self-portrait”, Peter Wyden

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Uncontrollable consumerism has become a watchword of our culture despite regular and compelling calls for its end. The United States has more malls than high schools; Americans spend more time shopping than reading. ... Some of the most insightful writing about the American character over the nation's history has been about neither freedom nor democracy but about the crazed impulse to acquire things.

  Anna Quindlen

  Reading, Writing, School

  Anna Quindlen (2004). “Loud and Clear”, p.184, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nixon represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Country, Character, Dark

  Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do always feel very proud and flattered by being asked to be a part of American productions playing American characters.

  Toby Jones

  Character, Proud, Feels

  "Toby Jones on playing Alfred Hitchcock and improvising with Danny McBride". Interview with Will Harris, www.avclub.com. October 19, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Remarkable trait in the American Character is the union, not very infrequent, of Yankee cleverness with spiritualism.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Yankees, Unions

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.378, Harvard University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The strongest streak in the American character is a fierce pragmatism that mistrust blind ideology of every stripe and insists on finding what really works.

  Eric Liu

  Character, Stripes, Fierce

  4 Copy quote

• If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Character, Handouts, Routes

  Nixon, Richard M. (1971). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1969”, p.645, Best Books on

  88 Copy quote

  Show source

• The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has all too much a professional air.

  Mary McCarthy

  Character, Eye, Air

  "America the Beautiful". Commentary Magazine, September 1947.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more I know about America, the better I'll be at performing American characters and American stories.

  Rebel Wilson

  Character, America, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• I've always gotten a positive reaction to doing African-American characters.

  Tracey Ullman

  Character, African American, Reactions

  4 Copy quote

• The American mood, perhaps even the American character, has changed. There are few manifestations any longer of the old American self-assurance which so irritated Dickens. Instead, there is a sense of frustration so perceptible that even our politicians have attempted to exploit it.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Character, Frustration, America

  Archibald MacLeish (1978). “Riders on the Earth: essays and recollections”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• By the time [John Adams] came to write his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States in 1787 he had as dark a view of the American character as that of any critic in our history.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Writing, Character, Dark

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency - clear disinterested thinking and fearless action

  Woodrow Wilson

  Spiritual, Character, Thinking

  Woodrow Wilson (1916). “Addresses of President Wilson, January 27-February 3, 1916”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• America is a land of healthy appetites. It is not in the American character to live in order to eat. Rather, the reverse is true. Many try, but just as Americans don't make good gigolos, nether do they make good gourmets.

  Ludwig Bemelmans

  Food, Character, Order

  6 Copy quote

• I've never been front and centre as an iconic American character [like in Doctor Strange]. Day to day, you know you're painting on a very big canvas.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  Character, Doctors, Strange

  Source: www.empireonline.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm asking the American people to rise above the noise and the clutter of our broken politics.

  Donald Trump

  Character, People, Broken

  "Meet the Press". www.nbcnews.com. October 23, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are a people that have always celebrated other people's success so long as we always had the opportunity to meet that success ourselves. That is the American nature. That is the American character. That is one of the things that makes us different from the rest of the world. And I'm afraid we could lose that or are on the verge of losing that.

  Marco Rubio

  Character, Opportunity, Long

  6 Copy quote

• The left and Democrats are relying on the decline the American character that left-wing policies have produced.

  Dennis Prager

  Character, Wings, Decline

  4 Copy quote