Quotes About Americans

Because of the Civil Rights movement, new doors of opportunity and education swung open for everybody ... Not just for blacks and whites, but also women and Latinos; and Asians and Native Americans; and gay Americans and Americans with a disability. They swung open for you, and they swung open for me. And that's why I'm standing here today-because of those efforts, because of that legacy.

When you talk about the security and safety of average Americans it doesn't do average Americans a lot of good to expand America's military footprint if the daily lives of average Americans are being undermined by the fact that we're no longer able to compete in a global economy. I think that's the kind of human security we have to pay more attention to.

40, 50 years ago, Americans - the majority of Americans did not want to accept these Vietnamese refugees who they saw as completely foreign. Now there are new foreigners - Syrians and other people from the Middle East, people of Muslim backgrounds. And the sense among many Americans is, well, these people are completely different from us, and they're not like the Vietnamese who are much more assimilable. And I think that's very, very doubtful. I think that the majority of these new foreigners, if given the opportunity, will be able to assimilate and deal with American culture.

We're a country here, that if you take a picture of what America looks like, you can do It in a football stadium or a basketball court and you see all different kinds of Americans There. We're pretty proud of that, the different looking Americans that are still Americans.

Americans really don't know much about chess. But I think when I beat Spassky, that Americans will take a greater interest in chess. Americans like winners.

The gap between ideals and actualities, between dreams and achievements, the gap that can spur strong men to increased exertions, but can break the spirit of others -- this gap is the most conspicuous, continuous land mark in American history. It is conspicuous and continuous not because Americans achieve little, but because they dream grandly. The gap is a standing reproach to Americans; but it marks them off as a special and singularly admirable community among the world's peoples.

When President Kennedy was elected, many black Americans, like so many Americans, were captivated by his youth and energy and promise and were especially hopeful that he might move the country in a new direction on civil rights.

We like to say medicare is uniquely Canadian, but Americans have Medicare too. Even the name. I can't actually determine where the name started, except that it appeared in the two countries at about the same time. Had the Vietnam War not occurred, the Americans would have had a Medicare system much like ours.

Politicians like to talk about the income tax when they talk about overtaxing the rich, but the income tax is just one part of the total tax system. There are sales taxes, Medicare taxes, social security taxes, unemployment taxes, gasoline taxes, excise taxes - and when you add up all of those taxes [many of which are quite regressive], and then you look at how they affect the rich and the poor, you essentially end up with a system in which the best off 20 percent of Americans pay one percentage point more of their income than the worst off 20 percent of Americans.

The illusion of design is so successful that to this day most Americans (including, significantly, many influential and rich Americans) stubbornly refuse to believe it is an illusion.

Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets, because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots and announce - yes, announce - that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by... liberals.

Some of our most powerful works of art have been produced by older Americans-by hands that have engaged in years of hard work, eyes that have witnessed decades of change, and hearts that have felt a lifetime of emotions. Our whole society benefits when older Americans use their talents and experiences to become involved in the arts as creators, teachers, mentors, volunteers, and audiences.

When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.

The notion that Americans can be protected from "terror" by giving up the Bill of Rights is absurd. Democrats are complicit in this absurd notion. Many were intimidated into voting for police state legislation, because they lacked the intestinal fortitude to call police state legislation by its own name. The legislation that has been passed during the Bush regime is far more dangerous to Americans than Muslim terrorists.

Government has the responsibility to provide the climate in which Americans, all Americans, have an opportunity for good jobs; and not only for good jobs, but an opportunity if they have the ability and the desire, to be owners and managers, to have a piece of the action, because if they have a piece of the action, then they believe in the system rather than fighting against it.

The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. If the state will take care of me and my neighbors, why should I? This is why Western Europeans, people who have lived in welfare states far longer than Americans have, give less to charity and volunteer less time to others than do Americans of the same socioeconomic status.

In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can't afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.

Eventually, Americans would be stuck with government-run health care whether they like it or not. That's when the worst scenario would take shape, with Americans subjected to bureaucratic hassles, hours spent on hold waiting for a government service rep to take a call, restrictions on care, and, yes, lifesaving treatment and lifesaving surgeries denied or delayed.

I've always been interested in the history of the West, our country and particularly as it relates to the Native Americans - the original Americans.

Winston Churchill used to say that we, Americans, try every other option before we finally do the right thing. After everything else is exhausted we eventually do the right thing and I think that's true for Congress as well. And it's important for Americans to remember that politics has always been messy.

Native Americans were driven off their land. Lincoln even took part in the Black Hawk campaign against the Native Americans in Illinois. While they were being exterminated and driven off their land, Whites were collecting assets.

Government isn't a good way to solve problems ... [G]overnment is concerned mostly with self-perpetuation and is subject to fantastic ideas about its own capabilities. ... [G]overnment is wasteful of the nation's resources, immune to common sense and subject to pressure from every half-organized bouquet of assholes. ... [G]overnment is distrustful of and disrespectful toward average Americans while being easily gulled by Americans with money, influence or fame.

However, the Administration's plan to privatize Social Security will undermine retirement security for all Americans by cutting guaranteed benefits by more than 40 percent, and risky private accounts won't make up for the loss of benefits for millions of Americans.

We are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions... and shall rise and fall with Americans.

I think anyone that comes to Nigeria has to offer value. What value are you bringing? There are Black Americans here. I think we've moved beyond that Africans vs. African Americans. They may have more issues with us than we do with them.

Obamanomics, his imposition of European-style socialism is not working for African-Americans. It is not working for Latinos and African-Americans.

Maybe we need a tax credit for the poorest Americans to buy a laptop. Now, maybe that's wrong, maybe that's expensive, maybe we can't do it, but I'll tell you, any signal that we can send to the poorest Americans that says, 'We're going into a 21st century, third-wave information age, and so are you, and we want to carry you with us.'

I think we recognize as Americans there are certain things that are just primary to the freedoms and liberties that we enjoy here and religious freedom is one of the most important things we as Americans cherish.

In a speech at the just-concluded G20 summit in London, President Obama urged Americans not to let their fears crimp their spending. It would be unwise, he argued, for Americans to let the fear of job loss, lack of savings, unpaid bills, credit card debt or student loans deter them from making major purchases. According to the president, 'we must spend now as an investment for the future'....instead of saving for the future, we must spend for the future.

Most middle-class Americans, even working-class Americans, encounter each other across racial lines all the time, but it gets really hard-core when you get into that witches' brew that is the combination of race and poverty.

What we accomplished during World War Two is just amazing. We turned our country upside down. African Americans were demanding to be given combat missions. 10% of Americans moved in order to relocate for a war job. We as a country accomplished this heroic, nearly miraculous thing, and we have this legacy of policies and agency - how did they do it? How did they fund it? How did they organize it? It is actually an example that we can borrow from very productively to guide us.

I think on both sides of the pond, there are pros and cons to TV and film, and I think that there are things the British people can learn from the Americans and things the Americans can probably learn from us when it comes to the acting industry. But the main thing here in the USA is everything is just a hell of a lot bigger. The sets are bigger, the casts are bigger, the crews are bigger.

Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live...They won't become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seriousness of the situation home to them.

I want to bring Americans into some experiences they ordinarily would not consider. Experiences in Latin America, people in Latin America, I want to bring them closer to those people, and I know I have to work extra hard at my craft to reach across these increasing chasms, these gaps that exist between different kinds of Americans, and that's the work of the artist, is to create these works that sort of help us understand our time.

The only people that deserve to be called Americans are Native Americans, otherwise, I'm a Latino American, you know.... Anybody else... well where did you come from?

Eighty five percent of Americans, year in and year out, say they believe everyone should have universal coverage. The problem is everybody has a different idea of how to make it work. And unfortunately what you have is 85 percent of Americans are reasonably well-insured. And when you start thinking about how you're going to get the remaining 15 percent, everyone gets very nervous.

It was mainstream Americans that signed up and voted for Donald Trump. Mainstream Americans all over the country. There aren't enough of these ragtag wackos to elect anybody president. The Alt-Right, nobody ever heard of, by the way, until Trump came along.

I worry a great deal about all of those surveys that are out that Americans, in particular, are becoming distrustful of our institutions - that Americans are beginning to say they're either irrelevant or they're corrupt or they certainly don't speak to me. But the institutions are actually still functioning.

I think Indians will pick up on a lot of the direct commentary on Delhi, which Americans will obviously miss, while Americans might get more out of watching pop-culture play out in unusual ways in a foreign country. Who knows?

Then as now, whatever disagreements over policies existed among Americans - and there were many such bitter policy disputes - the purposes and goals for which Americans fought were clearly understood.

[democrats] have become the party of snobs. You have become the party of Americans who think they're better than other Americans.

A $200 million contract just got awarded to develop software to provide the Department of Defense with all these sock puppets who have fake Twitter and Facebook accounts. Why not create ten fake Libyan Twitter users and then get one journalist to follow them. But the problem is, of course, it corrupts the entire process. One of the caveats is that anything they write is going to be in a foreign language so it won't affect Americans. But that doesn't make any sense because: A) it can be translated pretty easily, and B) Americans also speak other languages.

The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans. I say, the trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.

I believe that America has the opportunity to once again live by our values, live up to our values in the 21st century, but I think that America can only do that if Americans can succeed. And there are lots of reasons why Americans today are feeling left out and left behind.

[The Republican plan will] make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans and that ensures affordable access for all Americans and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.

But still, I’d be darned if I was going to be one of those Americans who stomp around Italy barking commands in ever-louder English. I was going to be one of those Americans who traversed Italy with my forehead knit in concentration, divining wordsw from their Latin roots and answering by wedging French cognates into Italian pronunciations spliced onto a standard Spanish verb conjugation.

For over two centuries, each generation of Americans before us confronted and solved problems. They embraced opportunities and Americans have never had it easy. This was a nation founded by declaring independence for the most powerful empire in the world. This was a nation that faced a divisive and bloody civil war, two great world wars, a long cold war.

Many Americans are feeling, you know, shut out, shut down, the great recession hasn't ended for too many Americans, wages are flat, families are struggling, not enough new jobs, or new businesses are being created, and it's important that we all try to figure out what we're going to do, and that's what I've done my entire life, fighting for a higher minimum wage, or family leave, now paid family leave which I believe in, equal pay for equal work.