Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on America

If I added to their pride of America, I am happy.
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American Biographer, Novelist, Socialist

Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihoodthe virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer

The Americans are violently oral. That’s why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all—isn’t respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth.
W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.
Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American Head of State

I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem—and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American Head of State, Military Leader

Thank God we’re living in a country where the sky’s the limit, the stores are open late and you can shop in bed thanks to television.
Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American Comedienne, Writer

Their manners, speech, dress, friendships,—the freshness and candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage—their deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean—the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states—the fierceness of their roused resentment—their curiosity and welcome of novelty—their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy—their susceptibility to a slight—the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors—the fluency of their speech—their delight in music, a sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul—their good temper and open-handedness—the terrible significance of their elections, the President’s taking off his hat to them, not they to him—these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.
Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist

America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.
William S. Burroughs (1914–97) American Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer, Painter

It’s the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it. Everybody has their own America, and then they have the pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see.
Andy Warhol (1928–87) American Painter, Printmaker, Film Personality

The trouble with us in America isn’t that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.
Louis Kronenberger (1904–80) American Drama, Literary Critic

The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth… the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us.
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher

What would you call America’s most priceless asset? Surely not its limitless natural resources, not its matchless national wealth, not its unequalled store of gold, not its giant factories, not its surpassing railroads, not its unprecedented volume of cheap power. Is not its most priceless asset the character of its people, their indomitable self-confidence, their transcendent vision, their sleepless initiative and, perhaps above all, their inherent, irrepressible optimism?
B. C. Forbes (1880–1954) Scottish-born American Journalist, Publisher

America, where people do not inquire of a stranger, “What is he?” But “What can he do?”
Anonymous

Alligator: The crocodile of America, superior in every detail to the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World.
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) American Head of State, Lawyer

American is a very difficult language mixed with English.
Unknown

America’s present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.
Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American Head of State, Businessperson

The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is, it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had existed; it was defined before it existed.
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet

I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.
Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be…
John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) English Economist

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels—men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American Head of State, Military Leader

America has proved that it is practicable to elevate the mass of mankind—the laboring or lower class—to raise them to self-respect, to make them competent to act a part in the great right and the great duty of self-government; and she has proved that this may be done by education and the diffusion of knowledge. She holds out an example a thousand times more encouraging than ever was presented before to those nine-tenths of the human race who are born without hereditary fortune or hereditary rank.
Daniel Webster (1782–1852) American Statesman, Lawyer

Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have a political convention without politics to nominate a leader who’s out in front of nobody? Maybe our national mindlessness is the very thing that keeps us from turning into one of those smelly European countries full of pseudo-reds and crypto-fascists and greens who dress like forest elves.
P. J. O’Rourke (b.1947) American Journalist, Political Satirist

The one being abhorrent to the powers above the earth and under them is the hyphenated American.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.
John Adams (1735–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French Head of State, Physician, Publisher, Political leader

I don’t think the United States needs superpatriots. We need patriotism, honestly practiced by all of us, and we don’t need these people that are more patriotic than you or anyone else.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American Head of State, Military Leader

I think the greatest curse of American society has been the idea of an easy millennialism—that some new drug, or the next election or the latest in social engineering will solve everything.
Robert Penn Warren (1905–89) American Poet, Novelist, Literary Critic

As for America, it is the ideal fruit of all your youthful hopes and reforms. Everybody is fairly decent, respectable, domestic, bourgeois, middle-class, and tiresome. There is absolutely nothing to revile except that it’s a bore.
Henry Adams (1838–1918) American Historian, Man of Letters

America is not like a blanket: one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.
Jesse Jackson (b.1941) American Baptist Civil Rights Activist, Minister

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer

The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.
Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American Journalist, Political Commentator, Writer

People in America, of course, live in all sorts of fashions, because they are foreigners, or unlucky, or depraved, or without ambition; people live like that, but Americans live in white detached houses with green shutters. Rigidly, blindly, the dream takes precedence.
Margaret Mead (1901–78) American Anthropologist, Social Psychologist

We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.
Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat

I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.
Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist

The story of America is the story of expanding liberty: an ever-widening circle, constantly growing to reach further and include more. Our nation’s founding commitment is still our deepest commitment: In our world, and here at home, we will extend the frontiers of freedom.
George W. Bush (b.1946) American Head of State, Businessperson

It is a very dangerous doctrine to consider the (Supreme Court) judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions. It is one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer

The most important American addition to the World Experience was the simple surprising fact of America. We have helped prepare mankind for all its later surprises.
Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer

Part of the American dream is to live long and die young. Only those Americans who are willing to die for their country are fit to live.
Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) American Military Leader

It’s difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn’t available.
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American Head of State

Every ship that comes to America got its chart from Columbus.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

What you have to do is enter the fiction of America, enter America as fiction. It is, indeed, on this fictive basis that it dominates the world.
Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher

Deep down, the US, with its space, its technological refinement, its bluff good conscience, even in those spaces which it opens up for simulation, is the only remaining primitive society.
Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher

Most people are looking for security, a nice, safe, prosperous future. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s called the American Dream.
Lee Iacocca (1924–2019) American Businessperson

In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

On Thanksgiving Day, all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment—half- time.
Indian Proverb

The American people abhor a vacuum.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer

Growing up female in America. What a liability! You grew up with your ears full of cosmetic ads, love songs, advice columns, whoreoscopes, Hollywood gossip, and moral dilemmas on the level of TV soap operas. What litanies the advertisers of the good life chanted at you! What curious catechisms!
Erica Jong (b.1942) American Novelist, Feminist

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