Quotes About America

It's rural America. It's where I came from. We always refer to ourselves as real America. Rural America, real America, real, real, America.

I think that America could not become America until it dealt with the disenfranchisement of women and African Americans in the last century. It had to. America could not become America until it dealt with that. And did it deal with it perfectly? No. But it had to confront it.

And when I speak, I don't speak as a Democrat or a Republican, nor an American. I speak as a victim of America's so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy - all we've seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I, therefore, intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt.

America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities are closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate-We are America!

Well, I had a small degree, that little infection of skepticism about America which resides in the minds of even America's closest friends. That America can't be quite as good as it says it is. And why does it need so relentlessly to keep saying how good it is?

Basically, there are two kinds of stereotypes out there in the world about America. There's America the Goliath - the big, powerful, bullying country that pushes its way around the world and gets its ways, pursues its own interests nakedly, irrespective of what others want. And the other stereotype is America, the land of opportunity, where everyone can go and do anything, be anything, make any dreams come true.

Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can't see. So the fantasy corners of America seem so atmospheric because you 've pieced them together from scenes in movies and music and lines from books.

We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. How else is the world to take America seriously, when democracy at home is daily being outraged, free speech suppressed, peaceable assemblies broken up by overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform; when free press is curtailed and every independent opinion gagged? Verily, poor as we are in democracy, how can we give of it to the world?

Maybe it's understandable what a history of failures America's foreign policy has been. We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners. Any prolonged examination of the U.S. government reveals foreign policy to be America's miniature schnauzer -- a noisy but small and useless part of the national household.

I hope the story of 2011 is that America gets its mojo back. You've got to remember that America has the best universities; it's got some of the best businesses. It's got an unbelievable work ethic, rule of law. The story of 2011 will be America blossoming again.

President Obama is viewed by much of the world as feckless, weak, and incompetent, even antiAmerican - and that's by nations who are our allies and friends. As it pertains to China, Iran and North Korea (who just set off a nuclear weapon) they spit in America's face. They have no respect for America, and they sure as hell have no fear of America.

America has an almost obscene infatuation with itself. Has there ever been a big, powerful country that is as patriotic as America? And patriotic in the tinniest way, with so much flag waving? You'd really think we were some poor little republic, and that if one person lost his religion for one hour, the whole thing would crumble. America is the real religion in this country.

There is no color line in death. I swear to the lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me. O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath - America will be! I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America. Now, some have argued Columbus actually discovered the West Indies, or that Norsemen had discovered America centuries earlier, or that you really can't get credit for discovering a land already populated by indigenous people with a developed civilization. Those people are communists. Columbus discovered America.

As a result of that, America desires a moderate Islam; an Islam that America can control; an Islam that America can give direction to and give orders to its leaders.

If it is an element of liberation for Latin America, I believe that it should have demonstrated that. Until now, I have not been aware of any such demonstration. The IMF performs an entirely different function: precisely that of ensuring that capital based outside of Latin America controls all of Latin America.

One can not be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.

The true meaning of America, you ask? It's in a Texas rodeo, in a policeman's badge, in the sound of laughing children, in a political rally, in a newspaper... In all these things, and many more, you'll find America. In all these things, you'll find freedom. And freedom is what America means to the world. And to me.

I think that having a black president in America has been a seismic shift, in terms of what has been going on racially in America. I think that America is now engaging with how we have come to this point.

It should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society.

Hillary's opponent, in his entire campaign, every two or three weeks has said for months and months and months, beginning in Nevada, that really there wasn't much difference in how America did when I was president and how America's done under President Bush. Now, if you believe that, you should probably vote for him, but you get a very bad grade in history.

But the Iranians are surrounded by a sea of Sunnis who hate them. And if you look on the map, you can see that they're also surrounded by a bunch of American bases that certainly could hit them at any moment. The idea that the Iranians are a threat to the United States is absurd really. How are they going to hurt the United States of America? Unless we attack them first and then they use terrorism inside America.

America is a magical place, and I think my job, or the job of a lot of us European filmmakers is to just hold up America to Americans and present it to you in a new way. All I wanted to do is in a funny way say, "Look at your country. It's magnificent."

Some of the reasons why Muslims would look down on America or even countries that have democracy, is because that's what they've been taught all their life. And it's not really their fault if you think about it, it's their government's fault for teaching people that America, them over there across the ocean, they're the devil.

But the people of Arizona, the people of America, have been promised that our borders would be secured for years and years and years, with it not happening. And I don't believe the people of America, certainly not the people of Arizona, are ready to discuss anything other at this point in time other than securing our borders.

While there is an attempt by the Trump people to say that California isn't really America. California certainly seems like America to me.

Montreal's a unique city, very fascinating stories of architecture and history, and it's this sort of bizarre mixture of Europe and North America. It's not quite Canada and it's not quite America, and it's definitely got this very Euro feel to it. It's a very, very interesting city.

It's very different - the European way of working and the American way of working. There are two sides for each of them. In Italy, or France, we take it very slow. For example, we would have a lunch break of an hour or more. Just sitting down at the table, chitchatting. In America, it's like, "Grab your sandwich, we're ready to shoot in 10 minutes." But at the same time, everything works so much better in America. It's more efficient, so it's easier to bring the results home faster.

Pop stars exist in a different space, one not necessarily tied to a patriotism. So Rihanna is everyone's. She doesn't just belong to America, even though she's a creation of America.

So if you're black or brown, you can make money in America, you can get rich in America... but whatever you decide to do, it better be positive, 'cause if one person is harmed, you will be destroyed. You see Oprah, she just be giving away money. She's doing that to keep the Feds off her back.

It's probably more frustrating to me as an Iranian living in America than it is when I'm over there. Inside Iran, people are actually quite well educated about America. There are things they don't understand, particularly in the government, but the people, by and large, know the American sensibility quite well, and the reverse is not true. There's a lack of knowledge about Iran and the Iranian people.

Black Friday, in reality, is a symptom of the plight that 30 years of Reaganomics has brought to working people in America. Right along with the frenzied rise of shoppers willing to fight each other at retail outlets across America, we've been steadily, for the last 30 years, watching the destruction of organized labor ... of decent pay and wages and conditions for working people. ... We have Black Friday today because the wealthy elite have strangled their workers for 32 years, ever since Ronald Reagan's election.

I don't have any authority to talk about the domestic policies of America. But as an outsider, I am mystified by the fact that you are encouraged to buy a gun, but if you use it for the purpose that it is expressly designed for, you get the death penalty. That aspect of America is kind of mystifying.

The artist is something of an outsider in America. I have always felt that America does not value its artists, certainly not in the sense that the Europeans do.

The pattern of American presidential elections is that the more optimistic candidate, whether it's John Kennedy and let's get America moving again, Ronald Reagan, it's morning in America, or Barack Obama, yes, we can, always wins, or nearly always wins.

Hansen’s disease”—that’s the other modern name, I guess, for leprosy—“Hansen’s disease was so rare in the America that in 40 years only 900 people were afflicted. Suddenly, in the past three years, America has more than 7,000 cases of leprosy

For here in America, those who once had no hope will give their kids the chance at a life they always wanted for themselves. Here in America, generations of unfulfilled dreams will finally come to pass.

We enriched foreign countries at the expense of our own country, the great United States of America. But those days are over. I'm not - and I don't want to be - the president of the world. I'm the president of the United States. And from now on, it's going to be America First.

I think the new generations in America, the America's youth, no longer care about Vietnam. They don't want to hear any more about it.

America is very much about individual happiness, the right to expression, self-determination. In America you do need to point to harm befalls victims before you can limit someone else's rights.

There are compelling reasons to implement a true America First immigration plan, starting with border security. We are a land of immigrants. Immigration, with assimilation, has generally been good for America.

It used to be said: As GM goes, so goes America. Now it's: As Starbucks goes, so goes America.

For all the noise and anger that too often surrounds the immigration debate, America has nothing to fear from today's immigrants. They have come here for the same reason that families have always come here-for the hope that in America, they could build a better life for themselves and their families. Like the waves of immigrants that came before them and the Hispanic Americans whose families have been here for generations, the recent arrival of Latino immigrants will only enrich our country.

America loves a winner, and will not tolerate a loser, this is why America has never, and will never, lose a war.

Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.