American Character Quotes

#1. There is something in the American character, traditionally, that yearns to see the status quo kicked in the ass.

Alec Cizak

#2. The left and Democrats are relying on the decline the American character that left-wing policies have produced.

Dennis Prager

#3. We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency - clear disinterested thinking and fearless action

Woodrow Wilson

#4. That strange conflict in the American character: we pride ourselves on being the melting pot of the world but we insist on regarding most immigrants with suspicion.

Gene Tierney

#5. The American mood, perhaps even the American character, has changed. There are few manifestations any longer of the old American self-assurance which so irritated Dickens. Instead, there is a sense of frustration so perceptible that even our politicians have attempted to exploit it.

Archibald MacLeish

#6. Remarkable trait in the American Character is the union, not very infrequent, of Yankee cleverness with spiritualism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#7. Nixon represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.

Hunter S. Thompson

#8. We are faced this year with the choice between the "work ethic" that built this Nation's character and the new "welfare ethic" that could cause that American character to weaken.

Richard M. Nixon

#9. It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate.

Thomas Jefferson

#10. The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.

Mary McCarthy

#11. I think the level of casualties is secondary ... [A]ll the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war ... What we hate is not casualties but losing.

Michael A. Ledeen

#12. The strongest streak in the American character is a fierce pragmatism that mistrust blind ideology of every stripe and insists on finding what really works.

Eric Liu

#13. We have to start processing what we're really made of in America. American character is not dead. American integrity and honesty are not dead. When we're backed up against the wall against the largest corporations in the history of corporations, it's there.

Josh Fox

#14. If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished.

Richard M. Nixon

#15. There is scarcely an aspect of the American character to which humor is not related, few which in some sense it has not governed ... It is a lawless element, full of surprises.

Constance Rourke

#16. If we are to give our utmost effort and skill and enthusiasm, we must believe in ourselves, which means believing in our past and in our future, in our parents and in our children, in that particular blend of moral purpose and practical inventiveness which is the American character.

Margaret Mead

#17. The entitlement mentality so carefully cultivated by liberal academics, politicians, clergymen, and journalists continues to corrode the self-sufficiency that once defined the American character.

Mona Charen

#18. For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing governments, and that is a puzzlement to me ... I don't understand what there is in the American character ... that almost automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them.

Michael Parenti

#19. America is a land of healthy appetites. It is not in the American character to live in order to eat. Rather, the reverse is true. Many try, but just as Americans don't make good gigolos, nether do they make good gourmets.

Ludwig Bemelmans

#20. It suggests that however innovative Obama's speeches and Lin's show might seem, they are, in fact, traditional. They don't reinvent the American character, they renew it.

Jeremy McCarter

#21. One of the great things and one of the horrible things about the American character is this extraordinary optimism and arrogance that everything will continue to be great and keep looking up.

John Wells

#22. The fact that so many are willing to accept need-based aid signals a fundamental change in the American character.

Nicholas Eberstadt

#23. I want to find the candidates who understand the principles of American exceptionalism and have the character, the courage, and the confidence to actually lead the greatest nation in the world.

Jim DeMint

#24. With big, emotional roles it's very easy, especially if you've grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character.

Laura Linney

#25. It was great to do August Rush and have all the challenges of playing that character, especially the American accent for the first time and also playing the guitar and the conducting I had to do.

Freddie Highmore

#26. It is a rare American who does not have some story about how music has made our lives richer and more interesting, how it has changed our moods, brought out the best in our character and even sometimes helped us earn a living.

Lamar Alexander

#27. You have to believe in its principles. Anything is possible, as long as it's for the good of the world. Make the exception. Live exceptionally. And if you can't do that, maybe we should consider whether you're right for the project. Think about it, then let's talk tomorrow.

Amy Tan

#28. I was a supporting character in other people's lives, which seemed right and familiar to me. I was also an outsider: English in the U.S., American in England, dogged yet comforted by that familiar feeling of alien-ness, which occupied that space where my sense of self should have been.

Allegra Huston

#29. Mine is really - Ziggy Stardust, characters, "Let's Dance." That's me in the American.

David Bowie

#30. American and Vietnamese characters alike leap to life through the voice and eyes of a tenyearold girl-a protagonist so strong, loving, and vivid I longed to hand her a wedge of freshly cut papaya.

Mitali Perkins

#31. A lot of American actors I work with are in character all day long. You can't talk to them. It's Method and the whole thing.

Norman Jewison

#32. I think it's a wonderful thing to have African-American characters. Look at life. It's not a white world or a black world; there are all kind of people in it. It's showing growth, and in today's world there are so many outlets.

Darius McCrary

#33. I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.

Maya Lin

#34. With courage and character, American soldiers continue to put themselves on the line to defend our freedom, and so many have paid the ultimate sacrifice.

Dan Lipinski

#35. I'm probably an actor that tends to, instead of putting things on, think about it more in terms of taking away what's not in the character, until I'm left with what is. If that makes sense. That's probably a particularly American way of working, but maybe not. The end of any movie is a readjustment.

Molly Parker

#36. I think Hellblazer is quite unique. In a comic world dominated by American characters (nothing wrong with that per se) Constantine was unashamedly British. A certain kind of miserablist British

Peter Milligan

#37. The American women are very pretty and have great simplicity of character, and the extreme neatness of their appearance is truly delightful: cleanliness is everywhere even more studiously attended to here than in England.

Marquis De Lafayette

#38. Give me liberty or give me death.
[From a speech given at Saint John's Church in Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775 to the Virginia House of Burgesses; as first published in print in 1817 in William Wirt's Life and Character of Patrick Henry.]

Patrick Henry

#39. The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

Maya Angelou

#40. Ron Swanson is more than the MVP of the 'Parks and Recreation' squad, more than just the funniest character on TV - he's the perfect depiction of aggrieved American manhood at the twilight of the empire.

Rob Sheffield

#41. What helped me a lot was that I chose an American lead protagonist, because that liberated a lot from my own knowledge. If I had approached it from the perspective of an Indian main character, I think I would have assumed a lot of knowledge and I would have resented the presence of the author.

Karan Bajaj

#42. By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry 'All right!' an American cries 'Go ahead!' which is somewhat expressive of the national character of the two countries.

Charles Dickens

#43. D. H. Lawrence used to observe on our national character: "The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted." Women

Piper Kerman

#44. Postal will be so politically incorrect and harsh, it's like a mirror to American society, and I don't think the movie will be well received by anybody. For example, Osama Bin Laden will be one of the lead characters-I think that shows the mood of the movie.

Uwe Boll

#45. There's more time spent on teaching kids about recycling than on character development in the American schools.

Dennis Prager

#46. I tried to find a character and how I would be an American actress in the 30s. But if this was a talking movie [The Artist], I'm sure she would be exactly the same for me.

Berenice Bejo

#47. I've tried to be inclusive in my '2B' series. Over the course of three books, I wrote African-American characters, a paraplegic character, gay and lesbian characters, a bisexual, Jewish heroine, a multiracial hero, Korean and Chinese-American characters, and a multiracial supporting character.

Ann Aguirre

#48. Presidential biography is, by its nature, out of scale; no character is bigger, no action greater, than the person and the doings of the American president.

Jill Lepore

#49. I think one of the most destructive things in terms of American security has been for all of our leaders, without exception in both parties, to identify Osama bin Laden as a gangster or as a madman, as an apocalyptic character who's out to destroy our civilization.

Michael Scheuer

#50. Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern this Nation. This difficult effort will be the moral equivalent of war, except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.

Jimmy Carter

#51. I think that American audiences are more used to following one character.

Kristen Bell

#52. How to Be an American Housewife is filled with dreams and love-the kinds that come true and those that don't. Margaret Dilloway is wise and ironic. She has created wonderful characters who never, in spite of hardships, stop finding ways to love each other.

Luanne Rice

#53. I would never want to write a character who was not thoroughly herself or himself. She's a very specific creature in my mind, and she has her thoughts, which range from skin to American history, philosophy, and the arts.

Lynne Tillman

#54. The cognitive skills prized by the American educational establishment and measured by achievement tests are only part of what is required for success in life. Character skills are equally important determinants of wages, education, health and many other significant aspects of flourishing lives.

James Heckman

#55. Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.

Charles Krauthammer

#56. I'm still kind of a hapless character in my everyday life. But when it comes to the writing, my influences are very old influences. I love American music of absolutely all stripes, including show tunes, advertising jingles, theme tunes from quiz shows, all kinds of American music.

Nick Lowe

#57. The danger of having the Constitution twisted and misconstrued to support vested interests and prejudices must be guarded against if American democracy is to maintain a progressive character.

Helen Keller

#58. There is a certain blend of courage, integrity, character and principle which has no satisfactory dictionary name but has been called different things at different times in different countries. Our American name for it is "guts."

Louis Adamic

#59. The character of American civilization is a bundle of contradictions,

James Davison Hunter

#60. I've always regarded it as a test of character to dislike the Kennedys. I don't really respect anyone who falls for Camelot.

Christopher Hitchens

#61. There must be a renewal of the spirit of our forefathers, an
appreciation of the American way of life, a strengthening of muscle and sinew and the character of the nation. America needs guts as well as guns.
National character is the core of national defense.

Ezra Taft Benson

#62. With Vietnam, the Iraq War, so many American films about war are almost always from the American point of view. You almost never have a Middle Eastern character by name with a story.

Mira Nair

#63. I populated 'The Bourne Identity' with real characters from American history, specifically characters from the Iran-Contra affair, which my father ran the investigation of. But at the heart of it was a fictional character.

Doug Liman

#64. In one point the plan was fatally defective, since it involved the deadly enmity of a race whose character and whose power were as yet but ill understood,
the fiercest, boldest, most politic, and most ambitious savages to whom the American forest has ever given birth.

Francis Parkman

#65. So my character on 'Tyrant' is a chap called Barry Al Fayeed, and he is the second son of a fictional Middle Eastern dictator. But, he has grown up since he was young in America. He's trained as a doctor. He's married a beautiful American girl, had two kids, so he's very much an American.

Adam Rayner

#66. My manager got the script for 'Under the Dome,' and I read it and just fell in love with the character. I grew up on Stephen King, and I love his whole aesthetic of the classic American story with supernatural events happening, so it just made sense.

Alexander Koch

#67. I received a phone call; my agent got a phone call from Ryan Murphy saying he wanted to talk to me ... And he basically outlined 'American Horror Story' for me and said that there's a character named Larry the Burn Guy, and I'd like you to play it.

Denis O'Hare

#68. Betty White's Sue Ann Nivens was classic ... She had done so much with that man-crazy character! Betty made every moment count. She still does. I've declared her an American treasure, because she is just that.

Gavin MacLeod

#69. To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.

Emma Goldman

#70. American Conservatives maintain that the finished character of a grown man is mainly due to congenital characteristics, while American Radicals maintain, on the contrary, that education is everything and heredity nothing. I cannot agree with either of these two extreme positions, nor

Bertrand Russell

#71. The great trap for non-American actors trying to play Americans, I think, is to start thinking of American-ness as a characteristic. It isn't. It is no more a character trait than height. It is just a physical fact, and that's all there is to it.

Hugh Laurie

#72. Why?"
"Because ... because he's so tall," Mindy explained, like height was proof of good character. "And did I mention European?"
"Yes. It's so much better to be stalked by a tall European that an American of average height.

Beth Fantaskey

#73. We are real black characters with real character, not the stars of American racist spectacle. Blackness is not probable cause.

Kiese Laymon

#74. So many people would be afraid to look in the mirror if the saw their character and not their face ... it would be like american horror story.

Turcois Ominek

#75. The orgy of thieving in Iraq has more to do with the character of the people than the absence of restraining troops. And to think that good, decent, law-abiding young British and American men and women laid down their lives to liberate this thieving mob.

Robert Kilroy-Silk

#76. I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.

Herbert Hoover

#77. Luckily, I have been offered the chance to play a South American, Hispanic and even a character from the Middle East in films. There are also a lot of TV series in the U.S. that have a strong presence of actors from India.

Madhur Mittal

#78. Citizenship to me is more than a piece of paper. Citizenship is also about character. I am an American. We're just waiting for our country to recognize it.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#79. My American accent is really, really good. I started out in the theater, doing all different characters with all different accents. When I first came to America, I thought I would be playing American, all the time. It was just weird how it worked out that I played more international characters.

Rebel Wilson

#80. There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensitive to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune, Roosevelt said just before he became president.

Timothy Egan

#81. The Henty books provide training in history and in many of the highest aspects of human character ... American young people should read not a few Henty books, but all 99 of them.

Arthur B. Robinson

#82. We're all on a journey. The average American switches professions four times. I'm lucky to be in a business where I can change the character I am playing every couple of months.

Josh Hartnett

#83. Character is destiny and character is important to American campaigns.

Mark Shields

#84. When you look at "American Crime" and you have the character Terri LaCroix is a pharmaceutical executive - why does that character always have to be white?

Regina King

#85. Intolerance of dissent is a well-noted feature of the American national character.

J. William Fulbright

#86. Middle-class Pakistani cultural life is what I've seen, what I know - they're not all screaming faceless mullahs. It's disturbing that in American films, the character on the other side is not even named.

Mira Nair

#87. One of the surest signs of the estimated changes in the consciousness of the American proletariat is to be found in the character of the demands now being put forward by the leadership.

C.L.R. James

#88. In order for American Pie to have worked, you have to have a character who, even while he is humping a pie, the audience still likes.

Jason Biggs

#89. Gentrification and consumerism ... have destroyed the character of my favorite American haunts, like North Beach, Berkeley, Venice and Aspen.

Tom Hayden

#90. Being American and being an outsider at the same time, it's a perspective I often bring to a character.

Aasif Mandvi

#91. As a media member, my goal is to inform the American fans of persons of character. It's a joy for me, either writing a good story or telling a story on video.

Dominique Dawes

#92. There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw.

Mike Nichols

#93. I liked Jim Morrison a lot as a person. He was this very poetic character, and death was always on his mind. And it showed up in his songs - I mean, almost every song he wrote had something to do with dying. He was an American treasure that went way too soon.

Alice Cooper

#94. Because John McCain stood up our country is better off. The respect he is given around the world is not because of a teleprompter speech designed to appeal to American critics abroad, but because of decades of clearly demonstrated character and statesmanship.

Fred Thompson

#95. I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho,and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#96. American exceptionalism is the recurring character in the nation's narrative.

Ron Fournier

#97. It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.

James Weldon Johnson

#98. I think everyone has some sort of connection to Gatsby as a character ... he's created himself according to his own emotions and dreams and lifted himself by his bootstraps from a poor kid in the Midwest and created this image that is The Great Gatsby and it's a truly American story in that regard.

Leonardo DiCaprio

#99. The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable.

Mary McCarthy

#100. President Abraham Lincoln once remarked, "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." Few people have more power than an American president. Being the so-called leader

John C. Maxwell