United States

The Great Seal of the United States

This article is for quotes about the United States of America, also known as the USA, U.S. and America.

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Quotes

  • God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.
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By Americans

  • Without Jefferson the new nation might have lost its soul. Without Hamilton it would assuredly have been killed in body.
  • There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
  • Patriotism is easy to understand in America; it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.
  • What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country.
  • Other countries may boast of this and that, but nobody can touch the United States for poisonous snakes. We have about twenty species, most of them deadly, and Europe has only five or six, none of them much good. We have fifteen kinds of Rattlesnakes alone and nobody else has even one. [Footnote: There is a species in Central and South America, but it probably came from here.]
  • This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.
  • Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!
  • The metaphor of the melting pot is unfortunate and misleading. A more accurate analogy would be a salad bowl, for, though the salad is an entity, the lettuce can still be distinguished from the chicory, the tomatoes from the cabbage.
    • Carl N. Degler, Out of Our Past: The Forces That Shaped Modern America (1970), rev. ed., chapter 10, section 4, p. 296.
  • If you take advantage of everything America has to offer, there's nothing you can't accomplish.
  • "here are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.
  • The U.S. military, unlike any other, maintains a doctrine of global power projection: that it should have the ability, through roughly 800 overseas military bases, to intervene with deadly force absolutely anywhere on the planet. In a way, though, land forces are secondary; at least since World War II, the key to U.S. military doctrine has always been a reliance on air power. The United States has fought no war in which it did not control the skies, and it has relied on aerial bombardment far more systematically than any other military-in its recent occupation of Iraq, for instance, even going so far as to bomb residential neighborhoods of cities ostensibly under its own control. The essence of U.S. military predominance in the world is, ultimately, the fact that it can, at will, drop bombs, with only a few hours' notice, at absolutely any point on the surface of the planet. No other government has ever had anything remotely like this sort of capability. In fact, a case could well be made that it is this very power that holds the entire world monetary system, organized around the dollar, together.
  • Ours is the only country deliberately founded on a good idea.
  • If you're a real American that is, an American Indian you're lucky to be alive. For whether he really believed it or not, the white man has acted on the principle that "The only good Indian is a dead one". This was certainly one of the foundation stones upon which the white European invaders of North America and their descendants established and built the republic of the U.S.A.
    • Stetson Kennedy , Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was, Ch.1 - No Room For Redskins, 1955.
  • Most of the American laws defining race are not to be compared with those once enforced by Nazi Germany, the latter being relatively more liberal. In the view of the Nazis, persons having less than one fourth Jewish blood could qualify as Aryans, whereas many of the American laws specify that persons having one-eighth, one-sixteenth, or "any ascertainable" Negro blood are Negroes in the eyes of the law and subject to all restrictions governing the conduct of Negroes.
    • Stetson Kennedy , Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was, Ch.4 - Who is Colored Where , 1955.
  • Americans never quit.
    • Comment as president of the American Olympic committee when the manager of the American boxing team in the 1928 Olympic games wanted to withdraw the team because of what he thought was an unfair decision against an American boxer; reported in The New York Times (August 9, 1928), p. 13.
  • The character of our enemies testifies to America's greatness.
  • America - a conservative country without any conservative ideology-appears now before the world a naked and arbitrary power, as, in the name of realism, its men of decision enforce their often crackpot definitions upon world reality. The second-rate mind is in command of the ponderously spoken platitude. In the liberal rhetoric, vagueness, and in the conservative mood, irrationality, are raised to principle. Public relations and the official secret, the trivializing campaign and the terrible fact clumsily accomplished, are replacing the reasoned debate of political ideas in the privately incorporated economy, the military ascendancy, and the political vacuum of modern America.
  • In the United States… a handful of corporations centralize decisions and responsibilities that are relevant for military and political as well as economic developments of global significance. For nowadays the military and the political cannot be separated from economic considerations of power. We now live not in an economic order or a political order, but in a political economy that is closely linked with military institutions and decisions. This is obvious in the repeated "oil crisis" in the Middle East, or in the relevance of Southeast Asia and African resources for the Western powers…
  • The American elite does not have any real image of peace — other than as an uneasy interlude existing precariously by virtue of the balance of mutual fright. The only seriously accepted plan for peace is the full loaded pistol. In short, war or a high state of war-preparedness is felt to be the normal and seemingly permanent condition of the United States.
  • We are now in a budding police state formerly known as the US of A.
  • We are now finally no better than a backwater banana republic.
  • America, the country where the vast majority of the pathetically stupid, embarrassingly white, and disgustingly rich men live.
  • The United States of America will become the United States of Banana--and Puerto Rico will be the first half-and-half banana republic state incorporated that will secede from the union. Then will come Liberty Island, then Mississippi Burning, Texas BBQ, Kentucky Fried Chicken—all of them—New York Yankees, Jersey Devils—you name it—will want to break apart—and demand a separation—a divorce. Things will not go well for the banana republic when the shackles and chains of democracy break loose and unleash the dogs of war. Separation—divorce—disintegration of subject matters that don’t matter anymore—only verbs—actions. Americans will walk like chickens with their heads cut off.
  • Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS…
  • In our experience, no modern country is more repressive of human rights than the U.S.A.
    • Fred Phelps, writing to the Ambassador to the United States from the People's Republic of China, February 26, 1997.
  • Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way.
    • Ronald Reagan on August 10, 1988, while signing the Bill Providing Restitution for the Wartime Internment of Japanese-American Civilians, quoting himself at the funeral of Kazuo Masuda in December 1945.
  • Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood -- the virtues that made America.
  • It's pathetic. It really is pathetic. It's sad. We're living in the dark ages in America.
  • We do not consider ourselves threatening. Puzzled when vilified, we assume our accusers must be demented.
  • When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
  • Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I'm not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be.
  • I shall know but one country. The ends I aim at shall be my country's, my God's and Truth's. I was born an American; I live an American; I shall die an American.
  • Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.
  • I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
  • I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
    • The Pledge Of Allegiance (1923-1954).
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By naturalized Americans

  • The trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed and their mothers have never been told to shut up.
  • Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
  • I wasn't born in America, but I got here as fast as I could.
    • Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, 2008 Think Tank interview
  • Whoever is fortunate enough to be an American citizen came into the greatest inheritance man has ever enjoyed. He has had the benefit of every heroic and intellectual effort men have made for many thousands of years, realized at last. If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.
  • America is the land of the uncommon man. It is the land where man is free to develop his genius -- and to get its just rewards.
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By non-Americans

  • The American loses no opportunity to acquire wealth. Gain is the subject of all his conversations, and the motive for all his actions. Thus, there is perhaps no civilized nation in the world where there is less generosity in the sentiments, less elevation of soul and of mind, less of those pleasant and glittering illusions that constitute the charm or the consolation of life. Here, everything is weighed, calculated and sacrificed to self-interest.
  • I found America the friendliest, most forgiving, and most generous nation I had ever visited. We South Americans tend to think of things in terms of convenience, whereas people in the United States approach things ethically. This — amateur Protestant that I am — I admired above all. It even helped me overlook skyscrapers, paper bags, television, plastics, and the unholy jungle of gadgets.
  • The United States is now a country against its own people and against the people of the world. It is anti-democratic.
  • «Ну, брат, это всё равно. Место хорошее; коли тебя станут спрашивать, так и отвечай, что поехал, дескать, в Америку.» Он приставил револьвер к своему правому виску. «А-зе здеся нельзя, здеся не места!», встрепенулся Ахиллес, расширяя всё больше и больше зрачки. Свидригайлов спустил курок.
    • ["Well, brother, I don't mind that. It's a good place. When you are asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America." He put the revolver to his right temple. "You can't do it here, it's not the place", cried Achilles, rousing himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger. Svidrigaïlov pulled the trigger.]
    • Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, part 6, Chapter 6.
  • America is a mistake, admittedly a gigantic mistake, but a mistake nevertheless.
  • Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America.
  • While envisaging the destruction of imperialism, it is necessary to identify its head, which is no other than the United States of America.
  • The gigantic North American State, with the enormous resources of its virgin soil, is much more invulnerable than the encircled German Reich. Should a day come when the die which will finally decide the destinies of the nations will have to be cast in that country, England would be doomed if she stood alone.
  • Thus the American presents a strange picture: a European with Negro behaviour and an Indian soul.
    • Carl Jung, Civilization in Transition, tr. R. F. C. Hull, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964, p.46.
  • I hope that there is no jealousy, or even ground of jealousy, on the part of the Americans, but that they know that when their rights come to be discussed here the greatest attention will be paid to their interests. They have long been acquainted with the habits of this country, and with the mode of administering justice here : until within these few years their causes used to come over here to be discussed, and I never heard that the decisions in our Courts ever awakened the least jealousy in the breasts of the inhabitants of that country.
    • Lord Kenyon, C.J., Wilson v. Marryat (1798), 8 T. R. 44, reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 13.
  • Every Muslim, from the moment they realize the distinction in their hearts, hates Americans, hates Jews and hates Christians. For as long as I can remember, I have felt tormented and at war, and have felt hatred and animosity for Americans.
  • The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer.
  • The United States of America is a threat to world peace.
  • There is no doubt that the United States now feels that they are the only superpower in the world and they can do what they like.
  • In this country, more than any other, esteem is based on wealth. Talent is trampled underfoot. How much is this man worth? they ask. Not much? He is despised. One hundred thousand crowns? The knees flex, the incense burns, and the once-bankrupt merchant is revered like a god.
  • I've got nothing against any individual American, except that there aren't any. They're always Irish-American, African-American - there's never an American-American you can blame!
  • I found that many Americans did not even know that a country named Iran existed, let alone what it was like. Even among the diplomatic corps and among well-educated people, there was a vagueness about who the Iranians were or what the culture was, a tendency to confuse Iran with Iraq or to mistakenly assume that Iran is an Arab country simply because it is an Islamic nation. This fuzziness about the world outside is unique to America; among the intelligensia of European countries, for example, there is generally a higher level of awareness and information regarding cultures other than their own.
  • I am continually amused by the Communist argument that the United States tries to prevent the less-developed countries from industrializing in order to keep them subservient to herself. In our extended dealings with the American aid authorities, we have never found this to be the case; on the contrary, they have helped us with a wide variety of industrial projects, including those that compete directly with American industries. The Americans have enough sense to prefer strong and prosperous friends, and they realize that their most lucrative international trade is with other highly industrialized countries, not with weak and backward ones.
  • I believe the United States is a truly monstrous force in the world.
  • The U.S. is really beyond reason now. It is beyond our imagining to know what they are going to do next and what they are prepared to do. There is only one comparison: Nazi Germany.
  • They are escaped convicts. His Majesty is fortunate to be rid of such rabble. Their true God is power.
  • In the five centuries since Columbus discovered the New World, savagery has been part of American life. There has been the violence of conquest and resistance, the violence of racial difference, the violence of civil war, the violence of bandits and gangsters, the violence of lynch law, all set against the violence of the wilderness and the city.
  • There is only one possible route of action, Greenhouse gases have to be radically reduced and it has to happen worldwide. Until now, the US has kept its eyes shut to this emergency. (Americans) make up a mere 4 percent of the population, but are responsible for close to a quarter of emissions.
  • Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations...In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.
  • The people reign in the American political world as the Deity does in the universe. They are the cause and the aim of all things; everything comes from them, and everything is absorbed in them.
  • In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.
  • We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
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Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 21-23.
  • E pluribus unum.
    • From many, one.
    • Motto of the United States of America. First appeared on title page of Gentleman's Miscellany, Jan., 1692. Pierre Antoine (Peter Anthony Motteaux) was editor. Dr. Simetiere affixed it to the American National Seal at time of the Revolution. See Howard P. Arnold Historical Side Lights. Compare: "Ex pluribus unum facere"; translation: From many to make one; St. Augustine, Confessions, Book IV. 8. 13.
  • Yet, still, from either beach,
    The voice of blood shall reach,
    More audible than speech,
    "We are one!"
    • W. Allston, America to Great Britain.
  • Asylum of the oppressed of every nation.
    • Phrase used in the Democratic platform of 1856, referring to the U. S.
  • O, Columbia, the gem of the ocean,
    The home of the brave and the free,
    The shrine of each patriot's devotion,
    A world offers homage to thee.
    • An adaptation of Shaw's Britannia.
  • America! half brother of the world!
    With something good and bad of every land.
  • A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
    • Edmund Burke, speech on Conciliation with America, Works, Volume II.
  • Young man, there is America—which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.
    • Edmund Burke, speech on Conciliation with America, Works, Volume II.
  • I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.
  • The North! the South! the West! the East!
    No one the most and none the least,
    But each with its own heart and mind,
    Each of its own distinctive kind,
    Yet each a part and none the whole,
    But all together form one soul;
    That soul Our Country at its best,
    No North, no South, no East, no West,
    No yours, no mine, but always Ours,
    Merged in one Power our lesser powers,
    For no one's favor, great or small,
    But all for Each and each for All.
    • Edmund Vance Cooke, Each for All, in The Uncommon Commoner.
  • Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
    The queen of the world and the child of the skies!
    Thy genius commands thee; with rapture behold,
    While ages on ages thy splendors unfold.
    • Timothy Dwight, Columbia.
  • Bring me men to match my mountains,
    Bring me men to match my plains,
    Men with empires in their purpose,
    And new eras in their brains.
  • Wake up America.
    • Augustus P. Gardner, speech (Oct. 16, 1916).
  • The breaking waves dashed high
    On a stern and rock-bound coast;
    And the woods, against a stormy sky,
    Their giant branches tost.
  • Hail, Columbia! happy land!
    Hail, ye heroes! heavenborn band!
    Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause.
  • America is a tune. It must be sung together.
  • Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
    Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
    Humanity with all its fears,
    With all the hopes of future years,
    Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
  • Down to the Plymouth Rock, that had been to their feet as a doorstep
    Into a world unknown,—the corner-stone of a nation!
  • Earth's biggest Country's gut her soul
    An' risen up Earth's Greatest Nation.
  • When asked what State he hails from,
    Our sole reply shall be,
    He comes from Appomattox And its famous apple tree.
    • Miles O'Reilly, poem quoted by Roscoe Conkling (June, 1880).
  • Neither do I acknowledge the right of Plymouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all America: it only crops out here.
    • Wendell Phillips, speech at the dinner of the Pilgrim Society at Plymouth (Dec. 21, 1855).
  • Give it only the fulcrum of Plymouth Rock, an idea will upheave the continent.
  • We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house.
  • My country, 'tis of thee,
    Sweet land of liberty,—
    Of thee I sing:
    Land where my fathers died,
    Land of the Pilgrim's pride,
    From every mountain side
    Let freedom ring.
    • Samuel F. Smith, America.
  • In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue?
    • Sydney Smith, Works, Volume II. America (Edinburgh Review, 1820).
  • Gigantic daughter of the West
    We drink to thee across the flood….
    For art not thou of English blood?
    • Alfred Tennyson, Hands all Round (in the Oxford Tennyson; Appeared in the Examiner, 1862; The London Times, 1880).
  • So it's home again, and home again, America for me!
    My heart is turning home again, and I long to be
    In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
    Where the air is full of sunshine, and the flag is full of stars.
  • The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.
  • Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.
    • Woodrow Wilson, address, Unveiling of the Statue to the Memory of Commodore John Barry, Washington (May 16, 1914).
  • Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another, it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people, and her example, her assistance, her encouragement, has thrilled two continents in this western world with all those fine impulses which have built up human liberty on both sides of the water. She stands, therefore, as an example of independence, as an example of free institutions, and as an example of disinterested international action in the main tenets of justice.
  • 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 along the right lines of thought. America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us; and it can consist of all of us only as our spirits are banded together in a common enterprise. That common enterprise is the enterprise of liberty and justice and right. And, therefore, I, for my part, have a great enthusiasm for rendering America spiritually efficient; and that conception lies at the basis of what seems very far removed from it, namely, the plans that have been proposed for the military efficiency of this nation.
  • Home from the lonely cities, time's wreck, and the naked woe,
    Home through the clean great waters where freemen's pennants blow,
    Home to the land men dream of, where all the nations go.
    • George E. Woodberry, Homeward Bound.
  • We must consult Brother Jonathan.
    • George Washington's familiar reference to his secretary and Aide-de-camp, Col. Jonathan Trumbull; the phrase, Brother Jonathan, later came to mean the American people, collectively.
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See also

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External links

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Last modified on 10 January 2013, at 17:47