America Quotes

This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.

~ Walker Percy

I find American girls have a spirit and honesty about them that is most refreshing.

~ Ann Rinaldi

There’s a lot of things wrong with this country, but one of the few things still right with it is that a man can steer clear of the organized bullshit if he really wants to. It’s a goddamned luxury, and if I were you, I’d take advantage of it while you can.

~ Hunter S. Thompson

Nobody had forgotten anything here. In Berlin, you had to wrestle with the past, you had to build on the ruins, inside them. It wasn't like America where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time.

~ Janet Fitch

We are oblivious to suffering. We are cheap with charity if it's not close to our home.

~ Bill Maher

From where would failed Americans leap if all of our towering buildings were razed to the ground? He envisions inflated airfares to Niagara Falls; renewed interest in the nations dams and gorges; long lines at the Grand Canyon, potential suicides being asked to take a numbered ticket, to wait their turn. Couldn't Al Qaeda see that we are killing our own well enough? Competitive society creates deep-rooted feelings of failure. On our own we succeed at self-termination; America needs no foreign aid from these murderers.

~ Alex Kudera

Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due.

~ Jon Stewart

I think this was a nice idea we had in this country and a nice landscape to experiment with. But I think there comes a time in almost any experimentation or idea, where you have to evaluate it, maybe our time has come. In the context of the real world, not just the American world but all around, we haven't done too well. We are not a very good advertisement for the idea we represented. If you lose one wheel of the car, you might be able to get to the side of the road, and some freaks can make it on two, but if you lose three, man, you're in serious trouble. I think we've lost three.

~ Hunter S. Thompson

And to think of this great country in danger of being dominated by people ignorant enough to take a few ancient Babylonian legends as the canons of modern culture. Our scientific men are paying for their failure to speak out earlier. There is no use now talking evolution to these people. Their ears are stuffed with Genesis.

~ Luther Burbank

In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.

~ Gary Shteyngart

In the end, one detail is unarguable: There will always be those searching for treasure. Never forget: We are a country founded on legends and myths. We love them, especially legends of treasure. Looking for treasure isn't just part of being an American, it is America.

~ Brad Meltzer

There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous [founding nations upon superstition]; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history... [T]he detail of the formation of the American governments... may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven... it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses... Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind.[A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America, 1787]

~ John Adams

Stop listening to the TV tell you about America the beautiful . . . get up and be America the beautiful.

~ Rivera Sun

For most Americans of the eighteenth century, it was assumed impossible for a servant to shed his lowly origins; the meaner sort, as one newspaper insisted, could never “wash out the stain of servility.” There were fears that the meaner sort were treading too close on the heels of those above them.

~ Nancy Isenberg

No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.

~ Matthew Desmond

Millennials: We lost the genetic lottery. We graduated high school into terrorist attacks and wars. We graduated college into a recession and mounds of debt. We will never acquire the financial cushion, employment stability, and material possessions of our parents. We are often more educated, experienced, informed, and digitally fluent than prior generations, yet are constantly haunted by the trauma of coming of age during the detonation of the societal structure we were born into. But perhaps we are overlooking the silver lining. We will have less money to buy the material possessions that entrap us. We will have more compassion and empathy because our struggles have taught us that even the most privileged can fall from grace. We will have the courage to pursue our dreams because we have absolutely nothing to lose. We will experience the world through backpacking, couch surfing, and carrying on interesting conversations with adventurers in hostels because our bank accounts can't supply the Americanized resorts. Our hardships will obligate us to develop spiritual and intellectual substance. Maybe having roommates and buying our clothes at thrift stores isn't so horrible as long as we are making a point to pursue genuine happiness.

~ Maggie Georgiana Young

It is a pervasive condition of empires that they affect great swathes of the planet without the empire's populace being aware of that impact - indeed without being aware that many of the affected places even exist. How many Americans are are of the continuing socioenvironmental fallout from U.S. militarism and foreign policy decisions made three or four decades ago in, say, Angola or Laos? How many could even place those nation-states on a map?

~ Rob Nixon

Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I’m from America, I consider myself an Armenian writer. The words I use are in English, the surroundings I write about are American, but the soul, which makes me write, is Armenian. This means I am an Armenian writer and deeply love the honor of being a part of the family of Armenian wrtiters.

~ William Saroyan

America takes her writers too seriously.

~ Kingsley Amis

People spend their entire lives at those lower altitudes without any awareness that this high country exists.

~ Robert M. Pirsig

Something must be radically wrong with a culture and a civilisation when its youth begins to desert it. Youth is the natural time for revolt, for experiment, for a generous idealism that is eager for action. Any civilisation which has the wisdom of self-preservation will allow a certain margin of freedom for the expression of this youthful mood. But the plain, unpalatable fact is that in America today that margin of freedom has been reduced to the vanishing point. Rebellious youth is not wanted here. In our environment there is nothing to challenge our young men; there is no flexibility, no colour, no possibility for adventure, no chance to shape events more generously than is permitted under the rules of highly organised looting. All our institutional life combines for the common purpose of blackjacking our youth into the acceptance of the status quo; and not acceptance of it merely, but rather its glorification.

~ Harold Edmund Stearns

The Pilgrims . . . put their ideals ahead of all material considerations. It is not surprising that the Pilgrims had little and succeeded, while we have much and are in danger of failing. No civilization can make progress unless some great principle is generously mixed into the mortar of its foundations in life.

~ Billy Graham

The Pilgrims had vision and hope because they lived in the dimension of eternity. Their strength of spirit was forged by a personal faith in God, by tough discipline, and by regular habits of devotion.

~ Billy Graham

Our nation grew strong in an era when moral standards were emphasized, and it will grow weak when we condone that which we once condemned.

~ Billy Graham

The nation’s image has become more like a chameleon—accepting whatever trend marketers concoct. Gone are the days of reverencing a holy God in the church or within ourselves. Yet the Bible tells us, “Happy is the man who is always reverent” (Proverbs 28:14 NKJV).

~ Billy Graham

What I find disturbing in America is the consuming desire for leisure, convenience, and fun. It seems we, as a nation, have traded God for gadgets. We have traded eternal truth for momentary self-gratification—worshipping false gods of materialism and humanism instead of the Creator of all things.

~ Billy Graham

As long as we are on this earth, we possess dual citizenship. On one hand we owe allegiance to our nation and are called to be good citizens. But we are also citizens of the kingdom of God. Our supreme loyalty is to Him.

~ Billy Graham

All the nations that make up the world are burdened down with riches or poverty, obesity or malnutrition, success or failure.

~ Billy Graham

At the bitter end of an era of liberation—women’s lib, kids’ lib, animal lib, and everything-but-ethics lib—America has apparently been liberated from its moral foundations. But for too many, the good life has become a living hell.

~ Billy Graham

The great flaw in the American economic system has finally been revealed: an unrealistic faith in the power of prosperity rather than in the ultimate power and benevolence of God.

~ Billy Graham

The American Dream became America’s god, wealth and abundance have become the measure of America’s success. But—as recent events have shown—we have been living an illusion.

~ Billy Graham

No matter how hard we try, words simply cannot express the horror, the shock, and the revulsion we all feel over what took place in this nation on 9/11. My prayer today is that we will feel the loving arms of God wrapped around us, and will know in our hearts that He will never forsake us as we trust in Him.

~ Billy Graham

The blood of Christ “purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9 NIV).

~ Billy Graham

We have so many battles going on in America today that we should be a people of prayer. Our government needs prayer. Our leaders need prayer. Our schools need prayer. Our youth need our prayers. Our families need our prayers.

~ Billy Graham

America’s Declaration of Independence speaks of “the pursuit of happiness,” but nowhere in the Bible are we told to pursue this. Happiness is elusive, and we don’t find it by seeking it.

~ Billy Graham

Just as America has grown and prospered within the framework of our Constitution, so Christianity has flourished and spread according to the laws set forth in the Bible.

~ Billy Graham

America has probably been the most successful experiment in history. The American Dream was a glorious attempt. It was built on a religious foundation. Its earliest concepts came from Holy Scripture.

~ Billy Graham

You can put a public school and university in the middle of every block of every city in America—but you will never keep America from rotting morally by mere intellectual education.

~ Billy Graham

I believe America has gone a long way down the wrong road. If we ever needed God’s help, it is now.

~ Billy Graham

God honored and blessed America as few nations in history. However, in recent years the nation has been moving away from its religious heritage.

~ Billy Graham