American Quotes

Is the patience of the American people that long suffering? Is there no outrage left in the country?

~ Andrew Greeley

And we ask the American people to play an important part of our layered defense. We ask for cooperation, patience and a commitment to vigilance in the face of a determined enemy.

~ Janet Napolitano

Americans' distrust of the conspicuously intellectual - a habit we learned, I suppose, on the frontier, but which remains a feature of the national character - has the virtue of puncturing the pretentious and exposing the fake, but it may also have impaired American listeners' patience for music that is especially complex or austere.

~ Steven Stucky

Bankruptcy is about financial death and financial rebirth. Bankruptcy is the great American story rewritten. We're a nation of debtors.

~ Elizabeth Warren

You know Americans are obsessed with life and death and rebirth, that's the American Cycle. You know, awakening, tragic, horrible death and then Phoenix rising from the ashes. That's the American story, again and again.

~ Billy Corgan

The obvious objections to the execution of Saddam Hussein are valid and well aired. His death will provoke violent strife between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and between Iraqis in general and the American occupation forces.

~ Richard Dawkins

The death penalty, I think, is a terrible scar on American justice, especially the concept of equal justice under law, but also of due process. And it goes state by state, and it's different in different states.

~ Burke Marshall

The American people know that every day 3,000 kids begin to smoke, 1,000 of them die an early death. They're not going to allow us to go forward this year and not have comprehensive bipartisan legislation. It's in everybody's best interest.

~ Erskine Bowles

I blame feminism and Facebook for the death of the American automobile. I'm a Republican, so I blame everything on feminism - or commies.

~ P. J. O'rourke

The death industry markets caskets and embalming under the rubric of helping bodies look 'natural,' but our current death customs are as natural as training majestic creatures like bears and elephants to dance in cute little outfits, or erecting replicas of the Eiffel Tower and Venetian canals in the middle of the harsh American desert.

~ Caitlin Doughty

Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't carry just a piece of cloth to symbolize his belief in racial equality; he carried the American flag.

~ Adrian Cronauer

Doing difficult things like passing marriage equality, passing the Dream Act, doing common sense things that allow new American immigrants to fully participate, pay their taxes, play by the rules and take care of their families. That's the inclusive America that I believe all of us want to move to.

~ Martin O'malley

Our socialism does not include extreme materialistic concepts, since Indonesia is primarily a God-fearing, God-loving nation. Our socialism is a mixture. We draw political equality from the American Declaration of Independence. We draw spiritual equality from Islam and Christianity. We draw scientific equality from Marx.

~ Sukarno

American society will never completely understand the true meaning of equality.

~ Bryant H. Mcgill

Why did mainstream America come to accept marriage equality? Gay leaders had made a convincing case that gay families were like straight families and should have the same rights. The American spirit of fair play had been invoked.

~ Edmund White

My commitment to gender equality is rooted in the quintessentially American principle of equal justice under law.

~ Eric Schneiderman

Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else.

~ Allen West

The word 'equality' shows up too much in our founding documents for anyone to pretend it's not the American way.

~ Martha Plimpton

The beauty of our democracy lies in the American value of equality: if you vote, you have a seat at the table. If you speak, you have a chance to persuade others. A billionaire and a minimum wage earner have the same power at the ballot box.

~ Christine Pelosi

The American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality; and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization.

~ Herbert Croly

The United States has made remarkable progress in reducing both teen pregnancy and racial and ethnic differences, but the reality is, too many American teens are still having babies.

~ Tom Frieden

A surprising number of American skyjackers were not yet old enough to drink or sometimes even drive. These adolescents were generally inept at planning their crimes, and few of their capers met with any success; most seemed to end within moments of starting, usually after a fatherly pilot convinced the nervous teen to hand over his gun.

~ Brendan I. Koerner

This may just be me, but I feel like everyone's dream is to live as an American high school student. There are so many teen films set in America that you live vicariously through them, anyway.

~ Katherine Langford

The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.

~ Wynton Marsalis

I don't want to be the cliche American Idol dude. I want to be different, you know - that's the whole goal, me and music. It's about being yourself and being unique.

~ Paul Mcdonald

But recently I began to feel that maybe I wouldn't be able to do what I want to do and need to do with American musicians, who are imprisoned behind these bars; music's got these bars and measures you know.

~ Sun Ra

Grammys, American Music Awards, successful albums, I'd pick my kids any day over any of it.

~ Toni Braxton

Have you listened to the radio lately? Have you heard the canned, frozen and processed product being dished up to the world as American popular music today?

~ Billy Joel

The bottom line is that we have entered an age when local communities need to invest in themselves. Federal and state dollars are becoming more and more scarce for American cities. Political and civic leaders in local communities need to make a compelling case for this investment.

~ Mick Cornett

Every age has found some alternative to American values appealing. The number of Western intellectuals enamored of fascism and all the various expressions of Marxism was legion.

~ Dennis Prager

I don't get a sense of American pride. I just get a sense that everyone is here, battling the same thing - that around the world everybody's after the same thing, just some minor piece of happiness each day.

~ Paul Thomas Anderson

The pursuit of happiness, which American citizens are obliged to undertake, tends to involve them in trying to perpetuate the moods, tastes and aptitudes of youth.

~ Malcolm Muggeridge

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'

~ Viktor E. Frankl

There is something very unique in American iconography about this notion of the pursuit of happiness.

~ David Henry Hwang

Like every American, I will never forget where I was on the morning of September 11, 2001. As a member of Congress from Indiana, that day my duties took me to Capitol Hill and to sights and sounds I will never forget.

~ Mike Pence

I really woke up one morning and said, you know, 'I haven't seen a good film about the American Revolution. And all the ones I have seen haven't been successful, but I'm going to make a successful one.' Well, I wasn't able to do that.

~ Irwin Winkler

Being in ballet class, being on the stage, being surrounded by my peers at American Ballet Theater every day, keeps me so humble and grounded. Being in ballet class, I feel, is like this meditation for me every morning.

~ Misty Copeland

And this President wakes up every morning, looks out across America and is proud to announce, 'It could be worse.' It could be worse? Is that what it means to be an American? It could be worse? Of course not. What defines us as Americans is our unwavering conviction that we know it must be better.

~ Mitt Romney

I created 'America's Next Top Model' one-hundred percent. I was in my kitchen making tea one morning, and I looked out the window, and the idea popped into my head. I wanted it to be 'American Idol' meets 'Ford Supermodel of the Year' meets 'The Real World.'

~ Tyra Banks

There are whole precincts of voters in this country whose united intelligence does not equal that of one representative American woman.

~ Carrie Chapman Catt