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AMERICANS

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see "PEOPLE" for related links


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 (1894—1984)
American journalist and critic.
_Once Around the Sun_ [1951], "January"

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 (1838—1922)
British politician, diplomat, and historian;
ambassador to the U.S. [1907-1913].
_The American Commonwealth_ [1888]

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 (1874—1936)
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] (1908—2004)
British-born American broadcater and journalist.
[6 May 1946]

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 (1872—1933)
American Republican statesman and President [1923—1929].
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 (1812—1870)
English novelist.
(In the 1840s.)

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 Army General, supreme Allied commander WWII,
NATO commander, US President [1953—1961].
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 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 (1940— )
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 (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 (1942— )
American country singer-songwriter.
Chorus from "God Bless the USA." (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 (1872—1961)
American judge.
Speech [21 May 1944],
"I Am An American Day" ceremony, Central Park, NYC, NY..

^

Nigel Hawthorne (1929—2001)
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 André Bernard [2000 ed.]

^

I don't see much future for the Americans . . .
Everything about the behavior of American
society reveals that it's half judaized,
and the other half negrified. How can one
expect a state like that to hold together?
--Adolf Hitler (1889—1945)
German dictator.

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 (1902—1983)
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 (1934—1984)
American author.

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 (1911—1978)
38th vice-president of the United States
[1965—1969] and liberal senator [1949—1965
& 1971—1978].

-

Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow—Red,
Yellow, Brown Black and White—we’re all precious in God’s 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 (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.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].

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 (1936— )
American journalist, essayist, and novelist.

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 (1897—1943)
American author.
"All Yankees Are Liars"

-

America's weaknesses and contradictions are out
in the open. Americans themselves have been the
first to see them. Wherever I have gone, I have
found Americans hard at work on their resolutions.
--Charles Kuralt (1934—1997)
American journalist and broadcaster.


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 (1934—1997)
American journalist and broadcaster.

-

-

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. (1850—1924)
Republican U.S. senator [1893—1924].
The Day We Celebrate (Forefathers' Day) Address,
New England Society of Brooklyn [21 December 1888].


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. (1850—1924)
Republican U.S. senator [1893—1924].

-

For some reason or other, the European has rarely
been able to see America except in caricature.
--James Russell Lowell (1819—1891)
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 (1892—1982)
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.

American youth attributes much more importance to
arriving at driver's license age than at voting age.
--H. (Herbert) Marshall McLuhan (1911—1980)
Canadian professor and author.
_Understanding Media_ [1964]

-

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,
uplifters.
--H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (1880—1956)
American journalist and literary critic.


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.
--1922 remark of H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (1880—1956)
American journalist and literary critic.

-

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 (1918—1970)
Egyptian army officer, prime minister [1954—1956]
and president of Egypt [1956—1970].
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 (1957— )
Czech-born American tennis player.
_Being Myself_ [1985], Chapter 1

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 (1947— )
American political satirist.
_Peace Kills_

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] (1737—1809)
English-American writer and political pamphleteer.
"The American Crisis" (a pamphlet) [19 April 1783]

-

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
Journalist for the "Washington Post,"
_Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa_ [1998].

-

Americans learn only from catastrophes and not
from experience.
--Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919)
American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909].
_Autobiography_ [1913]


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 (1858—1919)
American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909].
In a speech, "Americanism" New York City [12 October 1915].


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 (1858—1919)
American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909].
Speech in New York City [11 November 1902].

-

-

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 (1872—1970)
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 (1709—1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.
In James Boswell _The Life of Samuel Johnson_ [1791].


-

-

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, or 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 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 (1805—1859)
French historian and politician.


The Americans, in their intercourse with strangers,
appear impatient of the smallest censure and
insatiable of praise.
--Alexis de Tocqueville (1805—1859)
French historian and politician.
_Democracy in America_ [1835—1840]


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 (1805—1859)
French historian and politician.
_Democracy in America_ [1835—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 (1780—1863)
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 (1780—1863)
English author [mother of Anthony Trollope].
_Domestic Manners of the Americans_ [1832]

-

You know that being an American is more than a matter
of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all
men are created free and equal and that everyone
deserves an even break.
--Harry S. Truman (1884—1972)
American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [1945—1953].

Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see
the American eagle, it observes only the rear end
of an ostrich.
--H.G. Wells (1866—1946)
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 (1856—1924)
American Democratic statesman and President [1913—1921].
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 (1856—1924)
American Democratic statesman and President [1913—1921].
In an address 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 (1727—1759)
British general.
In a 1758 letter,
quoted in Brian Connell _The Savage Years_ [1959].


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