American History Quotes - Page 3

• we are the ones we have been waiting for

  Alice Walker

  Change, Confidence, Life Changing

  Alice Walker (2013). “The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker”, p.342, The New Press

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• Throughout American history, there have been moments that call on us to meet the challenges of an uncertain world, and pay whatever price is required to secure our freedom.

  Barack Obama

  Powerful, Challenges, World

  Barack Obama (2009). “Barack Obama: Speeches on the Road to the White House”

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• Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness-justice.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Country, Determination, Greatness

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• Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.

  Carl Bernstein

  Political, Reform, Movement

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• In the Sixties, there was a big resistance to the Vietnam War. People began reinterpreting all American history as a series of misadventures and crimes and oppressions visited upon the innocent, the poor, the defenseless, the minorities, and so on. This created a new narrative in America. Let's call it, "America the inexcusable." And this narrative has been drummed into the minds of our young people. A whole generation of Americans has been taught that theirs is a bad country. And it's then very difficult for them to figure out how one can one be a good citizen in a bad country.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Country, War, People

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• These are the times that try men's souls.

  Thomas Paine

  Veterans Day, Time, Motivation

  The American Crisis, 19 Dec. 1776

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• The war against Iraq is as disastrous as it is unnecessary; perhaps in terms of its wisdom, purpose and motives, the worst war in American history... Our military men and women...were not called to defend America but rather to attack Iraq. They were not called to die for, but rather to kill for, their country. What more unpatriotic thing could we have asked of our sons and daughters...?

  William Sloane Coffin

  Daughter, Country, Military

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• We have met the enemy and they are ours.

  Oliver Hazard Perry

  Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Military

  Message toWilliam Henry Harrison, 10 Sept. 1813. The source is Perry's dispatch from the U.S. brig Niagara to General Harrison, announcing that victory at the Battle of Lake Erie was secure. The dispatch was written in pencil on the back of an old letter; it is quoted in Robert B. McAfee, History of the LateWar in theWestern Country (1816). SeeWalt Kelly 2; Walt Kelly 3

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• **** the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

  David Farragut

  War, Military, Marine

  At the battle of Mobile Bay, 5 August 1864 ('torpedoes' were mines). Capt. A. T. Mahan 'Admiral Farragut' (1892) ch. 10

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• I have sworn upon the altar of god.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Government, Faith Religion

  Letter to Benjamin Rush, 23 Sept. 1800

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• Multiculturalism is a campaign to lower America's moral status by defining the American experience is terms of myriad repressionsand their victims. By rewriting history, and by using name calling ("Racist! Sexist! Homophobe!") to inhibit debate, multiculturalists cultivate grievances, self pity and claims to entitlements arising from victimization.

  George Will

  Self, Names, America

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• There was no intellectual movement in American history called social Darwinism. The people who were supposedly the leaders of the social Darwinist movement never embraced something called social Darwinism. It didn't exist.

  Jonah Goldberg

  People, Leader, Intellectual

  "Do Liberals Live Under A 'Tyranny Of Cliches'?". "Morning Edition" with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. May 2, 2012.

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• Washington's address is virtually unknown today and has not been seen in most American history textbooks in nearly four decades. Perhaps it is because of all the religious warnings Washington made in his 'Farewell Address.'

  David Barton

  Christian, Religious, Farewell

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• Politicians against gay marriage now, are the future villains of our American History books.

  Natalie Maines

  Book, Gay, Villain

  Twitter post from Jun 19, 2011

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• John Kerry's wife Teresa Heinz is on the cover of Newsweek magazine this week and they said that if he is elected president, she will be the oldest first lady in American history. But that doesn't bother John Kerry, he said, 'To me, she looks like a million bucks'

  Jay Leno

  Wife, President, Looks

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• [Louis] Brandeis, like [Tomas] Jefferson, is an equal opportunity critic of bigness. And he, like Jefferson, sees American history as this incredible clash between small producers, farmers, and small business people on the one hand, and wicked oligarchs and financiers and monopolists on the other.

  Jeffrey Rosen

  Opportunity, Hands, People

  Source: www.slate.com

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• Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.

  Oscar Handlin

  Writing, Discovery, Usa

  Oscar Handlin (2002). “The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People”, p.3, University of Pennsylvania Press

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• I think the Lewis and Clark Expedition was the greatest undertaking in American History. I think landing a man on the moon pales next to it.

  Kathryn Lasky

  Moon, Men, Thinking

  "An Interview with Kathryn Lasky about The Journal of Augustus Pelletier: The Lewis and Clark Expedition". Interview with Richard F. Abrahamson, www.scholastic.com.

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• When I was in school, all our history books were American, so we learned American history, not Canadian history.

  Dave Foley

  Book, School, Canadian History

  Interview with Stephen Thompson, www.avclub.com. October 14, 1998.

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• If one asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him: It means all that the Constitution of our people, organizing for justice, for liberty, and for happiness, meant. Our flag carries American ideas, American history and American feelings. This American flag was the safeguard of liberty. It was an ordinance of liberty by the people, for the people. That it meant, that it means, and, by the blessing of God, that it shall mean to the end of time!

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Mean, Blessing, Ideas

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• I'm sure that a previous generation of Jews who published radical newspapers and journals would be critical of [David] Simon's projects. These were left wingers who suffered casualties in some of bloodiest strikes in American history.

  Ishmael Reed

  Would Be, Generations, Casualties

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• A dangerous thesis has taken hold among many in the GOP: that it might be better to lose the '06 election and re-group. In American history, when a faction in the majority party decides the party is tired and could benefit from some time in the wilderness, the voters usually oblige. Most recently, the latest issue of Washington Monthly includes a cover story featuring seven such articles from prominent Republican strategists, insiders and commentators.

  Larry Sabato

  Party, Taken, Tired

  "Angry Politics: 'Voters Gone Wild' in 2006" by Larry Sabato and David Wasserman, www.realclearpolitics.com. September 17, 2006.

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• I would never want to write a character who was not thoroughly herself or himself. She's a very specific creature in my mind, and she has her thoughts, which range from skin to American history, philosophy, and the arts.

  Lynne Tillman

  Art, Philosophy, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Frank Johnson was recognized as one of the great federal judges of American history, I suppose. He was a law-and-order judge. He was a classical, I think, conservative. But he believed that civil rights provided in the Constitution applied to everybody.

  Jeff Sessions

  Thinking, Rights, Order

  Source: www.politico.com

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• Teaching ... particularly in the 1990s, teaching what is far and away the dumbest generation in American history, is the same as walking up Broadway in Manhattan talking to yourself, except instead of eighteen people who hear you in the street talking to yourself, they're all in the room. They know, like, nothing.

  Philip Roth

  Teaching, Talking, People

  Philip Roth (2010). “The Human Stain”, p.190, Random House

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