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;void(0)) AMERICANS . . . see: "FREEDOM" see: "PEOPLE" A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. ... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security. --Samuel Adams (17221803) American revolutionary leader. Letter to James Warren [12 February 1779]. We [Americans] cheerfully assume that in some mystic way love conquers all, that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe and that at the eleventh hour something gloriously triumphant will prevent the worst before it happens. --Brooks Atkinson (18941984) American journalist and critic. _Once Around the Sun_ [1951], "January" We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to no one in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it. --Dave Barry (b. 1947) American humorist. _Stay Fit and Healthy Until You're Dead_ [1985] The Americans are a good-natured people, kindly, helpful to one another, disposed to take a charitable view even of wrongdoers .... Even a mob lynching a horse thief in the West has consideration for the criminal, and will give him a good drink of whiskey before he is strung up. --James Bryce (18381922) British politician, diplomat, and historian; ambassador to the U.S. [1907-1913]. _The American Commonwealth_ [1888] The American dream is that any citizen can rise to the highest office in the land. The British dream is that the Queen drops in for tea. --Michael Bywater (b. 1953) British writer and broadcaster. In "Independent" [20 October 1997]. I might express it somewhat abruptly by saying that most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little beer or wine to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. . . . Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing. --G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (18741936) English essayist, novelist, and poet. In the "New York Times" [28 June 1931]. Americans are not particularly good at sensing the real elements of another people's culture. It helps them to approach foreigners with carefree warmth and an animated lack of misgiving. It also makes them, on the whole, poor administrators on foreign soil. They find it almost impossible to believe that poorer peoples, far from the Statue of Liberty, should not want in their heart of hearts to become Americans. If it should happen that America, in its new period of world power, comes to do what every other world power has done: if Americans should have to govern large numbers of foreigners, you must expect that Americans will be well hated before they are admired for themselves. --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (19082004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _Letter From America_ [6 May 1946] "The Immigrant Strain" The accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence... So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it. ... It is only those who do not understand the American people who believe that our national life is entirely absorbed by material motives. We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things we want much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element in all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. That is the only motive to which they give any strong and lasting reaction. --Calvin Coolidge (18721933) American Republican statesman and President [19231929]. In his "The chief business of the American people is business" speech. [Americans] no sooner set up an idol firmly than [they] are sure to pull it down and dash it into fragments. ... Any man, who attains a high place among you, from the President downward, may date his downfall from that moment. --Charles Dickens (18121870) English novelist. _American Notes_, ch. XVIII [1842] Then join Hand in Hand, brave Americans all, By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall. --John Dickinson (17321808) American politician. "A Song for American Freedom," called The Liberty Song, first published in _The Boston Gazette_ [18 July 1768]. The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power's sake ... but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy. It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one's own rules. --Joan Didion (b. 1934) American journalist and novelist. "7000 Romaine, Los Angeles" in _Slouching Towards Bethlehem_ [1968] Sex. In America an obsession. In other parts of the world, a fact. --Marlene Dietrich [Marie Magdalene Von Losch] (19011992) German-born film actress. Between 1943-1946 she made more than 500 appearances before Allied troops. _Marlene Dietrich's ABC_ [1962] Cecilia, as played by Knightley with stunning style, speaks rapidly in that upper-class accent that sounds like performance art. When I hear it, I despair that we Americans will ever approach such style with our words, which march out like baked potatoes. --Roger Ebert (b. 1942) American film critic. In an online review of the movie "Atonement" [2007]. The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children. --Edward VIII (18941972) King [1936], afterwards, the Duke of Windsor. In "Look" [5 March 1937]. Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves. --Albert Einstein (18791955) German-American physicist. Quoted in George Sylvester Viereck _Glimpses Of The Great_ [1930]. 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 (18901969), American Army General, supreme Allied commander WWII, NATO commander, US President [19531961]. In a speech at the Columbia University Bicentennial dinner [31 May 1954]. Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American. --Peter J. Ferrara Associate professor of law at George Mason. "What Is An American?" [25 September 2001] Americans see history as a straight line and themselves standing at the cutting edge of it as representatives for all mankind. They believe in the future as if it were a religion; they believe that there is nothing they cannot accomplish, that solutions wait somewhere for all problems, like brides. --Frances Fitzgerald (b. 1940) American journalist and author. _Fire in the Lake_ [1972] The contemporary American faith that it is a universal nation implies that all humans are born American, and become anything else by accident or error. --John Gray (b. 1951) American author. _False Dawn_ [1998] I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free. And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me. And I'd gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today. 'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land. God bless the USA. --Lee Greenwood (b. 1942) American country singer-songwriter. Chorus from "God Bless the USA" [1984 song] What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest. And now in that spirit, that spirit of an America which has never been, and which may never be; nay, which never will be except as the conscience and courage of Americans create it; yet in the spirit of that America which lies hidden in some form in the aspirations of us all; in the spirit of that America for which our young men are at this moment fighting and dying; in that spirit of liberty and of America I ask you to rise and with me pledge our faith in the glorious destiny of our beloved country. --Learned Hand (18721961) American judge. Speech [21 May 1944], "I Am An American Day" ceremony, Central Park, NYC, NY.. ^ Nigel Hawthorne (19292001) British actor. Hawthorne had played many roles before rocketing to fame in the United States in the movie "The Madness of King George III," in which he played the title role. Hawthorne's opinion of his American audience can be guessed by his comment to Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., to whom he said, 'That title is no good for America. They'll stay away thinking they've missed parts one and two.' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American's hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners...Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life. --Eric Hoffer (19021983) American longshoreman, philosopher, and author who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1982. _The True Believer_ [1951] Despite the focus in the media on the affluent and the poor, the average man is neither. Despite the concentration of TV commercials on the blond, blue-eyed WASP, the real American prototype is of Italian or Irish or Polish or Greek or Lithuanian or German or Hungarian or Russian or any one of the still amazing number of national origins represented in this country a "white ethnic," sociologists soberly call him. --Louise Kapp Howe (19341984) American author. _The White Majority: Between Poverty and Affluence_ [1971] There is in every American, I think, something of the old Daniel Boone who, when he could see the smoke from another chimney, felt himself too crowded and moved further out into the wilderness. --Hubert H. Humphrey (19111978) 38th vice-president of the United States [19651969] and liberal senator [19491965] & [19711978]. _The Quotable Hubert H. Humphrey_ [1967] - Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow Red, Yellow, Brown Black and White were all precious in Gods sight. 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. The White, the Hispanic, the Black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay and disabled make up the American quilt. Even in our fractured state, all of us count and fit somewhere. We have proven that we can survive without each other. But we have not proven that we can win and make progress without each other. We must come together. --Jesse Jackson (b. 1941) American Democratic politician and clergyman. Speech before the Democratic National Convention [16 July 1984]. - We must do our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies. --attributed to Thomas Jefferson (17431826) American statesman and president [18011809]. I am willing to love all mankind, *except an American*. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In James Boswell _The Life of Samuel Johnson_ [1791] "15 April 1778". Pay no attention to what Burke's Peerage says about Princess Diana's lineage. Any woman who goes on television and discusses her affairs, betrayals, suicide attempts, and vomiting habits, and then says 'I'm a very strong person,' is an American. --Florence King (b. 1936) American journalist, essayist, and novelist. "The Misanthrope's Corner" [c. 1995] You can always tell the Irish, You can always tell the Dutch You can always tell a Yankee; But you cannot tell him much. --Eric Knight (18971943) American author. "All Yankees Are Liars" _Saturday Evening Post_ [15 January 1938] To read the front pages, you might conclude that Americans are mostly out for themselves, venal, grasping, and mean-spirited. The front pages have room only for defense contractors who cheat and politicians with their hands in the till. But you can't travel the back roads very long without discovering a multitude of gentle people doing good for others with no expectation of gain or recognition. The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines. --Charles Kuralt (19341997) American journalist and broadcaster. _On the Road with Charles Kuralt_ [1985] - It is the flag just as much of the man who was naturalized yesterday as of the man whose people have been here many generations. --Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. (18501924) Republican U.S. senator [18931924]. "What the Flag Means" [1915] Let us have done with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German-Americans, and so on, and all be Americans. . . . If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description. --Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. (18501924) Republican U.S. senator [18931924]. The Day We Celebrate (Forefathers' Day) Address, New England Society of Brooklyn [21 December 1888]. & note: There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americans. . . . The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, or preventing all possibility of its continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities. --Theodore Roosevelt (18581919) American Republican statesman and President [19011909]. In a speech, "Americanism" New York City [12 October 1915]. - For some reason or other, the European has rarely been able to see America except in caricature. --James Russell Lowell (18191891) American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat. "On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners" [1869] Races didn't bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a People. They were the first self-constituted, self-created People in the history of the world. --Archibald MacLeish (18921982) American poet and public official. _The American Cause_ [1940] You Americans always stay where you're not wanted! --"Charles DeGaulle" to the graves in the Normandy cemetery, in a Bill [William Henry] Mauldin cartoon. The happy ending is our national belief. --Mary McCarthy (19121989) American novelist. "America the Beautiful: The Humanist in the Bathtub", in _Commentary_ [September 1947]. American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age. --H. (Herbert) Marshall McLuhan (19111980) Canadian professor and author. _Understanding Media_ [1964] The American people, taken one with another, constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the middle ages. [...] The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self-reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, up-lifters. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. "On Being an American" [1922] No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. Quoted in Harold Adams Innis _Changing Concepts of Time_ [1952]. - The genius of you Americans is that you never made clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing. --Gamal Abdel Nasser (19181970) Egyptian army officer, prime minister [19541956] and president of Egypt [19561970]. Quoted in Miles Copeland _Game of Nations_ [1970]. Being blunt with your feelings is very American. In this big country, I can be as brash as New York, as hedonistic as Los Angeles, as sensuous as San Francisco, as brainy as Boston, as proper as Philadelphia, as brawny as Chicago, as warm as Palm Springs, as friendly as my adopted home town of Dallas, Fort Worth, and as peaceful as the inland waterway that rubs up against my former home in Virginia Beach. --Martina Navratilova (b. 1957) Czech-born American tennis player. _Being Myself_, ch. I [1985] Americans hate foreign policy. Americans hate foreign policy because Americans hate foreigners. Americans hate foreigners because Americans _are_ foreigners. [...] Being foreigners ourselves, we Americans know what foreigners are up to with their foreign policy their venomous convents, lying alliances, greedy agreements, and trick-or-treaties. America is not a wily, sneaky nation. We don't think that way. We don't think much at all, thank God. Start thinking and pretty soon you get ideas, and then you get idealism, and the next thing you know you've got ideology, with millions dead in concentration camps and gulags. A fundamental American question is "What's the big idea?" --P.J. O'Rourke (b. 1947) American political satirist. _Peace Kills_ [2005] Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS our inferior one varies with the place. --Thomas Paine [spelled Pane prior to 1774] (17371809) English-American writer and political pamphleteer. "The American Crisis" (a pamphlet) [19 April 1783] I love the Americans because they love liberty, and I love them for the noble efforts they made in the last war. --William Pitt, the Elder, also called (from 1766) 1st Earl of Chatham (17081778) British statesman, twice virtual prime minister [17561761, 17661768]. Speech in the House of Lords [2 March 1770]. We don't have to turn to our history books for heroes. They're all around us. ... Don't let anyone tell you that America's best days are behind her, that the American spirit has been vanquished. We've seen it triumph too often in our lives to stop believing in it now. --Ronald Reagan (19112004) American President [19811989] and former Hollywood actor. State of the Union Address [26 January 1982] - You see? I just wrote `black American.' I couldn't even bring myself to write "African American." It's a phrase that, for me, doesn't roll naturally off the tongue: "African American." Is that what we really are? Is there anything really "African" left in the descendants of those original slaves who made that tortuous journey across the Atlantic? ... And for black Americans, I think, the reaffirmation of some kind of lost African identity is rooted more in fantasy than reality. Why would we, as Americans, want to embrace a continent so riven by tribal, ethnic, and religious hatreds? And besides, how can we, sons and daughters of American soil, reaffirm an identity that for us never existed in the first place? --Keith Richburg American journalist. _Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa_ [1998] - Americans are getting like a Ford car they all have the same parts, the same upholstering, and make exactly the same noises. --Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (18791935) American humorist and actor. Quoted in Willis Lemon Uhl & Francis F. Powers _Personal and Social Adjustment, a Text in Social Science_ [1938]. - The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight. --Theodore Roosevelt (18581919) American Republican statesman and President [19011909]. Speech in New York City [11 November 1902]. Americans learn only from catastrophes and not from experience. --Theodore Roosevelt (18581919) American Republican statesman and President [19011909]. _Autobiography_ [1913] - - In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards. --Bertrand Russell (18721970) British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate. _Unpopular Essays_ [1950], ch. X, "Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind" & note: Sir, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves: but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves. They would all have some people under them; why not then have some people above them? --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In James Boswell _The Life of Samuel Johnson_ "21 July 1763" [1791]. - I have defined the 100 per cent American as 99 per cent an idiot. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish dramatist and critic. "N.Y. Times" [19 December 1930] - If an American were condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence. --Alexis de Tocqueville (18051859) French historian and politician. _Democracy in America_, vol. I, pt. II, ch. 14 [1835] I have often remarked in the United States that it is not easy to make a man understand that his presence may be dispensed with; hints will not always suffice to shake him off. I contradict an American at every word he says, to show him that his conversation bores me; he instantly labours with fresh pertinacity to convince me: I preserve a dogged silence, and he thinks that I am meditating deeply on the truths which he is uttering: at last I rush from his company, and he supposes that some urgent business hurries me elsewhere. This man will never understand that he wearies me to extinction unless I make tell him so: and the only way to get rid of him is to make him my enemy for life. --Alexis de Tocqueville (18051859) French historian and politician. _Democracy in America_, vol. II, sec. III, ch. 3 [1840] If I were asked . . . to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people [the Americans] ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women. --Alexis de Tocqueville (18051859) French historian and politician. _Democracy in America_, vol. II, sec. III, ch. 12 [1840] The Americans, in their intercourse with strangers, appear impatient of the smallest censure and insatiable of praise. --Alexis de Tocqueville (18051859) French historian and politician. _Democracy in America_, vol. II, sec. III, ch. 16 [1840] - Other nations have been called thin-skinned, but the citizens of the Union have, apparently, no skins at all; they wince if a breeze blows over them, unless it be tempered with adulation. --Frances Trollope (17801863) English author [mother of Anthony Trollope]. _Domestic Manners of the Americans_ [1832] Let no one who wishes to receive agreeable impressions of American manners, commence their travels in a Mississippi steamboat. --Frances Trollope (17801863) English author [mother of Anthony Trollope]. _Domestic Manners of the Americans_ [1832] - The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism. --George Washington (17321799) American general and commander-in-chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution [17751783] and first president of the United States [17891797]. "Farewell Address" [17 September 1796] Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the American eagle, it observes only the rear end of an ostrich. --dattributed to H.G. Wells (18661946) English novelist. - Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name. --Woodrow Wilson (18561924) American Democratic statesman and President [19131921]. In a speech in Washington, D.C. [16 May 1914]. You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. --Woodrow Wilson (18561924) American Democratic statesman and President [19131921]. In a speech at Convention Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania [10 May 1915]. - The Americans are in general the dirtiest, most contemptible cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no depending on them in action. They fall down dead in their own dirt and desert by battalions, officers and all. Such rascals as those are rather an encumbrance than any real strength to an army. --James Wolfe (17271759) British general. In a 1758 letter, quoted in Brian Connell _The Savage Years_ [1959]. end page | ABILITY - ABUSE | ACADEMY AWARDS - ACCUSATION | ACHIEVEMENT - ACQUAINTANCE | ACTION/S | ACTORS / ACTING | ACTUARIES - ADVERSARIES | ADVERSITY - ADVERTISING | ADVICE | AFFAIRS - AFGHANISTAN | AGE | AGNOSTICS - AIRPLANES | ALCOHOL | ALIBI - AMBITION | AMERICA PAGE 1 (A-M) | AMERICA PAGE 2 (N-Z) | AMERICANS | AMERICAN INDIANS | AMERICAN REVOLUTION | AMUSEMENT - ANCESTORS | ANGER | ANIMAL RIGHTS - ANIMALS | ANIMOSITIES - APATHY | APOLOGY & APPEARANCE | APPEASEMENT | APPLAUSE - APRIL | ARCHAEOLOGISTS - ARCHITECTURE | ARGUMENT | ARISTOCRACY - ART | ASHAMED - ASTROLOGY | ATHEISM | ATOM BOMB - ATTRACTION | AUSTRALIA | AUTHORITY - AUTOMOBILES | AUTUMN - AWARENESS | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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