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

  14 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".

  18 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

  196 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.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Stevie Wonder

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  300 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

  55 Copy quote

• 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

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  6 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

  3 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)

  6 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.

  3 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

  6 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

  3 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

  87 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.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think Hellblazer is quite unique. In a comic world dominated by American characters (nothing wrong with that per se) Constantine was unashamedly British. A certain kind of miserablist British

  Peter Milligan

  Character, Unique, Thinking

  6 Copy quote

• I think it's a wonderful thing to have African-American characters. Look at life. It's not a white world or a black world; there are all kind of people in it. It's showing growth, and in today's world there are so many outlets.

  Darius McCrary

  Character, Thinking, White

  "The Darius McCrary Interview- The Young and the Restless". Interview with Michael Fairman, michaelfairmansoaps.com. December 22, 2009.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is scarcely an aspect of the American character to which humor is not related, few which in some sense it has not governed. ... It is a lawless element, full of surprises.

  Constance Rourke

  Humor, Character, Elements

  5 Copy quote

• The entitlement mentality so carefully cultivated by liberal academics, politicians, clergymen, and journalists continues to corrode the self-sufficiency that once defined the American character.

  Mona Charen

  Character, Self, Entitlement

  Mona Charen (2006). “Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help and the Rest of Us”, Sentinel

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the most important virtues of the American character is our ability to approach the complexities that life presents us with common sense and decency, .. The considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth. It is time for the president and the Congress to follow that common sense for the good of the country.

  Dick Gephardt

  Country, Fall, Character

  "Top Democrats rip Clinton's defense strategy". www.cnn.com. September 14, 1998.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fact that so many are willing to accept need-based aid signals a fundamental change in the American character.

  Nicholas Eberstadt

  Character, Needs, Fundamentals

  5 Copy quote

• New pressures are causing ever more people to find their main satisfaction in their consumptive role rather than in their productive role. And these pressures are bringing forward such traits as pleasure-mindedness, self-indulgence, materialism, and passivity as conspicuous elements of the American character.

  Vance Packard

  Character, Self, People

  32 Copy quote

• In speaking to you men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Life, Country, Character

  Speech to Hamilton Club, Chicago, Ill., 10 Apr. 1899

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• My ardent desire is, and my aim has been, to comply strictly with all our engagements, foreign and domestic, but to keep the United States free from political connections with every other country; to see that they may be independent of all and under the influence of none.

  George Washington

  Country, Home, Character

  "The real George Washington".

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand what there is in the American character...that almost automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them.

  Michael Parenti

  Character, Government, Years

  5 Copy quote