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Quotes about America

379 quotes from 149 people

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America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.
John Updike1932–2009“How to Love America and Leave it at the Same Time,” Problems and Other Stories (1979)
- Happiness
When the president does it that means that it is not illegal.
Richard Nixon1913–1994Interview with David Frost (May 19, 1977); printed in The New York Times (May 20, 1977), p. A16
- Laws
- Presidency
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams1735–1826Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798, in Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull (New York, 1848), pp 265-6
Under the doctrine of the separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.
Richard Nixon1913–1994
- Presidency
The country shall be independent, and we will be satisfied with nothing short of it.
Samuel Adams1722–1803Remark in “small confidential companies”; in William Gordon, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Independence of the United States of America, vol. 1 (1788, reprinted 1969), entry for March 9, 1774, p. 347.
Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Remember to lean back in the parade so everybody can see the president. Be sure not to get too fat, because you’ll have to sit three in the back.
Eleanor Roosevelt1884–1962
- Presidency
If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865The Lyceum Address (1838)
United States! Go put your creed into your deed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882May-Day and Other Pieces (1867), Ode, st. 5
Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president’s spouse. I wish him well!
Barbara Bush1925–2018
- Presidency
No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it. To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826
- Presidency
We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.
Benjamin Harrison1833–1901Statement of 1888, as quoted in Treasury of Presidential Quotations (1964) by Caroline T. Hamsberger
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.
Samuel Adams1722–1803The Rights of the Colonists (1772)
When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.
George W. Bushborn 1946George W. Bush’s Second Inaugural Address (2005)
- Liberty
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936
We have to make America the best place in the world to do business.
Dick Cheney1941–2025
- Business