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Quotes about America

379 quotes from 149 people

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I do not like broccoli and I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.
George H. W. Bush1924–2018News conference (22 March 1990)
A President is neither prince nor pope, and I don’t seek a window on men’s souls. In fact, I yearn for a greater tolerance, an easy-goingness about each other’s attitudes and way of life.
George H. W. Bush1924–2018George H. W. Bush’s Inaugural Address (1989)
- Presidency
America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the Nation and gentler the face of the world.
George H. W. Bush1924–2018George H. W. Bush’s Inaugural Address (1989)
- Morality
To put it very simply, anyone can become an American, but only a Chinese can be Chinese⁠—and that places an additional and significant barrier in the way of any essentially national global hegemony.
Zbigniew Brzezinski1928–2017The Grand Chessboard (1997), Conclusion, p. 210
- Power
Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation — at least, not just; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.
Barack Obamaborn 1961Keynote speech: Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America conference—Washington, D.C., June 2006.
- Religion
George Bush doesn’t care about black people.
Kanye Westborn 1977Live on NBC’s A Concert for Hurricane Relief (2 September 2005)
- Presidency
- Race
America’s most dangerous export was never nuclear weapons or Jerry Lewis⁠—or even Baywatch reruns. It was, is, and probably always will be our fast-food outlets.
Anthony Bourdain1956–2018The Nasty Bits (2006)
- Food
You don’t have to be smart to act — look at the outgoing president of the United States.
Cherborn 1946Remark (December 1988), reported in Brewer’s Cinema (1995)
The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic.
Horace Walpole1717–1797Letter to Sir Horace Mann (24 November 1774)
As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.”
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Letter to Joshua F. Speed (24 August 1855)
- Race
- Slavery
If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world.
Theodore Roosevelt1858–1919The Strenuous Life (1899)
Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968I’ve Been to the Mountaintop (1968)
- Freedom
All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office.
George Washington1732–1799Letter to Catherine Macaulay Graham (9 January 1790)
- Power
- Presidency
An incumbent in Washington knows he is in trouble on the day that cartoonists begin to represent him as a king.
Christopher Hitchens1949–2011The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain’s Favourite Fetish (1990)
- Power
- Presidency
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Concord Hymn (1837)In context
- History