United States Quotes

The United States was a big country where everybody wore funny t-shirts and ate too much.

~ Adam Rex

Every Canadian has a complicated relationship with the United States, whereas Americans think of Canada as the place where the weather comes from.

~ Margaret Atwood

And the looks on the faces of my countrymenpassive heads bent arms at their trousers everyone guilty of not being their best of not earning their daily bread the kind of docility I had never expected from Americans even after so many years of our decline. Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite. Here was the end product of our deep moral exhaustion.

~ Gary Shteyngart

People came here for a reason, to follow their conscience, to be free!

~ Glenn Beck

We do not admire their president.We know why the White House is white.We do not find their children irresistible,We do not agree they should inherit the earth.

~ Alice Walker

Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted.

~ Barack Obama

The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights and previleges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.

~ George Washington

An institution rooted in slavery cannot be the voice of our people.

~ Dashanne Stokes

To be black in America is a wild and endless assault on the senses. You can spend every day fighting off your spiritual and intellectual extinction.

~ Carvell Wallace

We want to remember that America is at its best when it’s struggling to live up to its stated ideals.

~ Lonnie Bunch

[I am] someone who represents a very complex country which insists on being simple-minded. And simplicity, it occurs to me, it has occurred to me more than once, in my somewhat stormy life, simplicity is taken to be a great American virtue, along with sincerity. And the result of this is, if you are simple-minded enough, you can become—I didn’t want to go that far [laughs]. And as long as you’re sincere in what you say, you haven’t got to know what you’re talking about. These are the American virtues—two of them anyway. One of the results of this is that immaturity is taken to be a virtue too.

~ James Baldwin

But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guarantied by the supreme law of the land are involved.

~ John Marshall Harlan

If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now.Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor--if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.

~ Colson Whitehead

The other patrollers were boys and men of bad character; the work attracted a type. In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.

~ Colson Whitehead

Though American scenery is destitute of many of those circumstances that give value to the European, still it has features, and glorious ones, unknown to Europe...the most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness

~ Thomas Cole

Probably in no other place on earth, is there a gathering of all mankind with different skin pigmentation, hair colours and textures, eye colours, tongues, cultures, beliefs or lack of any thereof, inclinations, and desires, and they peacefully (mostly) coexist.This is what makes America, the United States.

~ Magnus Nwagu Amudi

I’m dying twice as fastas any other Americanbetween eighteen and thirty-fiveThis disturbs me,but I try not to show it in public.

~ Essex Hemphill

A single word indicative of doubt, that any thing, or every thing, in that country is not the very best in the world, produces an effect which must be seen and felt to be understood. If the citizens of the United States were indeed the devoted patriots they call themselves, they would surely not thus encrust themselves in the hard, dry, stubborn persuasion, that they are the first and best of the human race, that nothing is to be learnt, but what they are able to teach, and that nothing is worth having, which they do not possess.

~ Frances Trollope

During these years in the small-talk wilderness, I also wondered why Americans valued friendliness with commerce so much. Was handing over cash the sacred rite of American capitalism—and of American life? On a day that I don’t spend money in America, I feel oddly depressed. It’s my main form of social interaction—as it is for millions of Americans who live alone or away from their families.

~ Karan Mahajan

I am groping about through this American forest of prejudice and proscription, determined to find some form of civilization where all men will be accepted for what they are worth.

~ P.b.s. Pinchback

His frustration with some Americans was like that of a disappointed parent. He was so content in this country, so impressed with and loving of its opportunities, but then why, sometimes, did Americans fall short of their best selves?

~ Dave Eggers

Everyone I have spoken with about working with the Russians in space exploration believes that the United States has learned a great deal from Russia and that Russia has learned a great deal from the United States – and that the entire international space partnership is much better because of it.

~ Ron Garan

We essentially had to build a docking mechanism between the two capsules. We didn't have to share a lot of data, and we did that at the height of the Cold War, which was pretty symbolic. –Bill Gerstenmaier

~ Ron Garan

Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.

~ Gary Shteyngart

After all, this is America, and you can swap out the parts of yourself that don't work. You can rebuild yourself piece by piece.

~ Gary Shteyngart

You can make a successful run for political office in this country without an especially thick résumé, any exceptional talent for expressing yourself, a noteworthy education or, for that matter, a basic grasp of science.But you better have religion. You better be ready to profess your faith in and fealty to God — the Judeo-Christian one, of course. And you better be convincing. A dust-up last week in the 2014 race for a United States Senate seat from Arkansas provided a sad reminder of this, showing once again that our ballyhooed separation of church and state is less canyon than itty-bitty crack.

~ Frank Bruni

Powerlessness can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. There is much that is wrong with America. But it will only be made right only if we force change to occur.

~ Robert B. Reich

America is harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.

~ Bernard Lewis

Prolific irony - For 8 years, the finger on the button that could end the world belonged to a president who couldn't pronounce the word nuclear.

~ T. Rafael Cimino

The burden therefore rests with the American legal community and with the American human-rights lobbies and non-governmental organizations. They can either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else. The current state of suspended animation, however, cannot last. If the courts and lawyers of this country will not do their duty, we shall watch as the victims and survivors of this man pursue justice and vindication in their own dignified and painstaking way, and at their own expense, and we shall be put to shame.

~ Christopher Hitchens

I want you to know that I have nothing against Orlando, though you are, of course, far more likely to get shot or robbed there than in London.

~ Boris Johnson

When the Holy Father passed away in 2005, Laura, Dad, Bill Clinton, and I flew together to his funeral in Rome. It was the first time an American president had attended the funeral of a pope, let alone brought two of his predecessors.

~ George W. Bush

The men and women who continue to hold Lynn's mind hostage against her will believe the future will be tilled with terrorism, death, destruction and a challenge to the survival of America. They believe Lynn and the other lab rats must still respond to their programming for they are the second line of defence against enemies from within and without and the first line of offence in a catastrophe which would require the recreation of America's constitutional government. They are still intent on preparing Lynn for the day when she will he necessary for battle. One summer day, all these dark realisations came flooding upon Lynn and she knew if she was ever to free herself, she needed to get immediate help.

~ Lynn Hersha

Thanks is part to our education system, we tend to think that we're smarter than the stupid guys in funny wigs who came before us. But that's because we are mistaking technology, progress, and access to information for intelligence. We think that because we know how to use iPhones (but not build them), browse the Internet (but not understand how it works), and use Google (but not really know anything), our educational system is working just great. By the same token, we think that those dumb aristocrats who used horses to get around and didn't have electricity were neanderthals.

~ Glenn Beck

In 1996 Dorothy Mackey wrote an Op-ed piece, “Violence from comrades a fact of life for military women.” ABC News 20/ 20 did a segment on rape in the military. By November four women came forward at Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland, about a pattern of rape by drill sergeants. In 1997 the military finds three black drill sergeants to scapegoat. They were sent to prison and this left the commanding generals and colonels untouched to retire quietly. The Army appointed a panel to investigate sexual harassment. One of the panelists was the sergeant Major of the Army, Eugene McK

~ Diane Chamberlain

Guantánamo Bay's motto: 'Safe, humane, legal, transparent detention.' Four adjectives describing one sick joke.

~ Rodney Ulyate

Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus'—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.

~ Noam Chomsky

The United States is democratic because its people live in conformity. It is the perfect country for mice.

~ Warren Eyster

As a Republic governed through the utilization of a democratic process, elections are necessary in order to give every United States citizen a voice in the governing of this great nation.

~ Byron Goines

The United States is like one big jail for Black people, because we're locked into a mentality and a mindset that limits our potential. It has us against us.

~ Chuck D