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Quotes about America

379 quotes from 149 people

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America is a mistake, a giant mistake.
Sigmund Freud1856–1939
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865A House Divided (1858)
- Slavery
America…just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
Hunter S. Thompson1937–2005“September,”, p. 413
- Guns
Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.
Malcolm X1925–1965Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address (1861)
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
Bill Clintonborn 1946Bill Clinton’s First Inaugural Address (1993)
You may think the President is all-powerful, but he is not. He needs a lot of guidance from the Lord.
Barbara Bush1925–2018
- God
- Presidency
In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956
This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.
Theodore Roosevelt1858–1919Chicago, IL (17 June 1912)
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.
Adlai Stevenson II1900–1965Speech to the American Legion convention, New York City (27 August 1952); as quoted in “Democratic Candidate Adlai Stevenson Defines the Nature of Patriotism” in Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches In History (2004) by William Safire, p. 81—82
- Freedom
The government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes.
Calvin Coolidge1872–1933
Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963
- Politics
- Presidency
America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense…human rights invented America.
Jimmy Carter1924–2024Farewell Address (January 1981)
The Constitution shall never be construed…to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.
Samuel Adams1722–1803