American Citizens Quotes

#1. Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers. We are going to have an immigration system that works, but one that works for the American people.

Donald Trump

#2. My fellow citizens, our nation is poised for greatness. We must do what we know is right, and do it with all our might. Let history say of us: "These were golden years - when the American Revolution was reborn, when freedom gained new life, and America reached for her best."

Ronald Reagan

#3. The cost in terms of liberties lost and the unnecessary exposure to terrorism are difficult to determine, but in time it will become apparent to all of us that foreign interventionism is of no benefit to American citizens, but is instead a threat to our liberties.

Ron Paul

#4. The American Dream was not about government's taking huge sums of money (under the label of "taxation") from citizens by force. The American Dream was about individualism and the opportunity to achieve success without interference from others.

Robert Ringer

#5. Isn't protecting our legal citizens from an invading army of illegal aliens who are using our services and taking our jobs, isn't that a basic notion of fairness? Isn't that in the Constitution? Where is the fairness to American citizens here?

Rush Limbaugh

#6. As it turns out, American-made technology had helped Mubarak and his security state collect, compile, and parse vast amounts of data about everyday citizens.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#7. Have you ever watched someone become American? Last week, at a national citizenship conference I organize, thirty immigrants from 17 countries swore an oath and became citizens of the United States. It was a stirring experience for the hundreds of people in the room.

Eric Liu

#8. What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

Kurt Vonnegut

#9. My overall worldview has never changed: that America has and must maintain the strongest military in the world, that we must lead the international community to confront threats and challenges together, and that we must use all tools of American power to protect our citizens and our interests.

Chuck Hagel

#10. American Christians have been woefully silent on important issues. I am an American citizens now, and I love this country, but I see symptoms in the United States that I saw in Austria in 1938 when the Nazi Germans were terrorizing Europe.

Maria Von Trapp

#11. There's an old saying in the black community that everybody else is protected and served but we are policed, we don't want to be policed. We want to be protected and served as any American citizen.

Benjamin Crump

#12. The new laws passed by Congress in the name of fighting terrorism pose a greater danger to the civil liberties of American citizens than to the operations of terrorists. Powers once assumed are never relinquished, just as bureaucracies, once created, never die.

Charley Reese

#13. The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.

H.L. Mencken

#14. If the people fail to vote, a government will be developed which is not their government ... The whole system of American Government rests on the ballot box. Unless citizens perform their duties there, such a system of government is doomed to failure.

Calvin Coolidge

#15. A society is judged by the way it cares for its most vulnerable citizens. As an American, I am ashamed that we have turned out backs on millions of our children. I want to do my part to rectify this terrible situation.

Marlo Thomas

#16. If we don't re-charge the American Brand, all future challenges - economic, social and political - are destined to be driven to the brink, further jeopardizing the strength and competitiveness of our country and its citizens.

Alan Siegel

#17. As we have seen from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's example, even one justice can profoundly alter the meaning of those words for our citizens. Even one justice can deeply affect the rights and liberties of the American people.

Edward Kennedy

#18. He always wants to expand every one's rights: illegal aliens, terrorists, Russian spies, except American citizens.

Rush Limbaugh

#19. [The Bytyqi Brothers were] American citizens and we have been seeking answers to why no one's been held accountable for these atrocities. [Family members] expect our government to do everything we can.

Ben Cardin

#20. One may lack words to express the impact of beauty but no one who has felt it remains untouched. It is renewal, enlargement, intensification. The parks preserve it permanently in the inheritance of the American citizens.

Bernard DeVoto

#21. It is time to stand strong for the American people. It is time to champion the interests of those constantly neglected on the question of immigration: the men and women and children we represent - the citizens of this country to whom we owe our ultimate allegiance.

Jeff Sessions

#22. According to The Washington Post, the NSA has been monitoring phone calls and emails of people in Mexico. So apparently it's not enough to spy on American citizens, they feel they have to spy on FUTURE American citizens as well.

Jay Leno

#23. One of the most effective tools that the Cheney-Bush junta has used to marginalize dissenting or even mildly inquisitive American citizens has been the accusation of being unpatriotic.

Viggo Mortensen

#24. The seal and the constitution, reflects the thinking of the founding fathers that this was to be a nation by white people, and for white people. Native Americans, Blacks, and all other non-white people, were to be the burden bearers for the real citizens of this nation.

Louis Farrakhan

#25. the most lovable of exceptional American qualities (is) our tradition of insisting that we are part of the middle class, even if we aren't, and of interacting with our fellow citizens as if we were all middle class.

Charles Murray

#26. When an American asks for the cooperation of his fellow citizens, it is seldom refused; and I have often seen it afforded spontaneously and with great good will.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#27. You're not supposed to risk your life just for the physical safety of American citizens - you're supposed to risk your life for American ideals as well.

Phil Klay

#28. The survival of American democracy depends less on the size of its armies than on the capacity of its individual citizens to rely ... on the strength of their own thought.

Lewis H. Lapham

#29. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis.

Camille Paglia

#30. I don't think that I or any other Negro, as an American citizen, should have to ask for anything that is rightfully his. We are demanding that we just be given the things that are rightfully ours and that we're not looking for anything else.

Jackie Robinson

#31. It hasn't been easy to find American citizens who are willing to pick fruit in 110 degree weather.

Fareed Zakaria

#32. Most of the State of the Union will not be about Iraq. Most of the State of the Union will be about improving America's economy and providing greater access to health care for millions of American people, including senior citizens.

Ari Fleischer

#33. To be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.

Herman Melville

#34. Edgar Wayburn has worked to preserve the most breath-taking examples of the American landscape. In fact, over the course of more than a half-century, both as President of the Sierra Club and as a private citizen, he has saved more of our wilderness than any person alive.

William J. Clinton

#35. The pursuit of happiness, which American citizens are obliged to undertake, tends to involve them in trying to perpetuate the moods, tastes and aptitudes of youth.

Malcolm Muggeridge

#36. There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer

Martin Luther King Jr.

#37. If there is a birthrate demographic problem, and there is, it is with the non-White races Israeli Arabs who are American will remain Israeli citizens.

Benjamin Netanyahu

#38. You know, American citizens, I don't think, ever thought that the right to the pursuit of happiness did not include the right to marry the person you love. But for a whole number of Americans, gay Americans, that happens to be true.

Andrew Sullivan

#39. We are not a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of citizens. I am sick and tired of the American citizen being demeaned and treated as a second-class citizen while anybody who crosses the border is treated as the most virtuous human being on the face of the earth.

Mark Levin

#40. Whether I am or am not a Communist is irrelevant. The question is whether American citizens, regardless of their political beliefs or sympathies, may enjoy their constitutional rights.

Paul Robeson

#41. The goal, I think, of American education, for decades, and across many, many scholars, was basically to teach people broad lessons in how to live life, how to engage life, how to essentially be effective citizens and effective people.

James Heckman

#42. I have come to a resolution myself as I hope every good citizen will, never again to purchase any article of foreign manufacture which can be had of American make, be the difference of price what it may.

Thomas Jefferson

#43. Unfortunately, every American citizen takes the same position that we don't like negative advertisements. But they work! And, as you see, many a candidate has prevailed by tearing down the reputation of an opponent in a more advantageous position.

Jimmy Carter

#44. For kids like me, being called childish can be a frequent occurrence. Every time we make irrational demands, exhibit irresponsible behavior, or display any other signs of being normal American citizens, we are called childish.

Adora Svitak

#45. Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy.

Bill Gates

#46. The Bill of Rights existed long before President Obama was elected, and as long as I'm a U.S. Senator, I will fight to protect the basic rights and liberties that belong to all of us as American citizens.

Rand Paul

#47. The best American is one who considers themselves as a citizen of the world.

Chuck D

#48. Think of the undying glory that hangs around the ancient name of Africa and forget not that you are native-born American citizens, and as such, you are justly entitled to all the rights that are granted to the freest.

Henry Highland Garnet

#49. I use the phrase "fellow citizen" all the time when referring to the - people always say, "The American people, the American people." I prefer the phrase fellow citizen because there's a power in that, there's a responsibility, there's a duty in using that phrase fellow citizen.

Tavis Smiley

#50. Under unitary executive theory, the [George W.]Bush administration has claimed the right to seize American citizens in the United States and imprison them indefinitely without a charge.

Dick Durbin

#51. Think about it: we went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands ...

Booker T. Washington

#52. I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#53. When American citizens pull together, there is little we can't accomplish.

Cory Booker

#54. If we accept the Greek's definition of the idiot as an altogether private man, then we must conclude that many American citizens are now idiots. And I should not be surprised, although I don't know, if there were some such idiots even in Germany.

C. Wright Mills

#55. I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally.

Bharati Mukherjee

#56. I was born in Australia and am proud of my Australian provenance, but I am now an American. Like so many naturalized citizens, I felt that I was an American before I formally became one.

Rupert Murdoch

#57. Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens and moral precepts.

Octavio Paz

#58. We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists; every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow-citizens, usually by force; the messianic delusion is our national disease.

H.L. Mencken

#59. He doesn't like my name ... Of course we couldn't all come over on the Mayflower ... But I got here as soon as I could, and I never wanted to go back, because to me it is a great privilege to be an American citizen.

Anton Cermak

#60. My administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.

Barack Obama

#61. There's a growing consensus that the best way to defeat communism in Cuba is to get its citizens hooked on American goods.

Timothy Noah

#62. We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online.

Clay Shirky

#63. Ron Paul warned everyone that the Patriot Act could be used against innocent American citizens. His critics said he was siding with terrorists. Now, either A. Ron Paul was right. Or B. All Verizon users are terrorists.

Jack Hunter

#64. It was to carry the American democratic journey beyond these failings that Black citizens and civil rights workers risked unemployment, violence and death.

Elijah Cummings

#65. The combined efforts of millions of concerned citizens could do wonders to help the impoverished. The American people are ready for action!

Barbara Boxer

#66. Let me say with a Georgia accent that we cannot solve this problem if it requires a diplomatic passport to claim the rights of an American citizen.

Dean Rusk

#67. I'm obviously an American citizen. My parents are American citizens. But I'm not looked at as an American.

Ana Castillo

#68. Isil poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East - including American citizens, personnel and facilities. If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States.

Barack Obama

#69. It was an egregious violation of the American Constitution. We were innocent American citizens, and we were imprisoned simply because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. It shows us just how fragile our Constitution is.

George Takei

#70. Among those best known, their highest ambition is to build American homes, possess American furniture, dress in American clothes, adopt the American style of living and be American citizens.

Sheldon Jackson

#71. So few American novels have happy endings. Perhaps this is not surprising in a nation whose declaration of independence provides its citizens not with the right to happiness, but the right to its pursuit.

Azar Nafisi

#72. The shortest distance between where we are today as a nation and an effective return to increasing our freedoms and widespread prosperity is for regular American citizens to read and study the great books.

Oliver DeMille

#73. The kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their Union, and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies.

Alexander Hamilton

#74. If American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran

Virgil Goode

#75. I have always held the conviction that American citizens should keep as much of their hard-earned money as possible.

Tim Walberg

#76. Resurrecting American democracy is vital to averting climate catastrophe. We must first repeal the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, which has flooded elections with billions of oily petrodollars from carbon tycoons.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

#77. Faith in the power of reason - the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power - was and remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

Al Gore

#78. It's okay to take the food out of the mouths of the citizens from a government that's plotting an attack directly on American soil.

Mark Kirk

#79. During World War II, law-abiding Japanese-American citizens were herded into remote internment camps, losing their jobs, businesses and social standing, while an all-Japanese-American division fought heroically in Europe.

Tom Brokaw

#80. Now and always, we expect to insist upon it that we are Americans, that America is our native land; that this is our home; that we are American citizens . . . and that it is the duty of the American people so to recognize us. - FREDERICK DOUGLASS A

Elizabeth Dowling Taylor

#81. Do your duty as an American, and as a citizen of the galaxy ... Vote!

George Takei

#82. There are jobs that American citizens will not do. We can talk about why that is. We can talk about how our welfare state is broken, how we encourage people not to work, but that doesn't help the farmer pick his peaches this summer.

Mick Mulvaney

#83. The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We can speak any language we want at the dinner table, but English is the language of public discourse, or the marketplace and of the voting booth.

S.I. Hayakawa

#84. You may be sure that in this new international system, the American citizen will count for precious little.

Pat Buchanan

#85. The American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality; and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization.

Herbert Croly

#86. And terrorists who seek to harm our citizens will feel the long arm of American justice.

Barack Obama

#87. Since Franklin Roosevelt's leadership in setting up the United Nations and the Nuremberg trials, the U.S. has promoted universal legal norms and the institutions to enforce them while seeking, by hook or by crook, to exempt American citizens, especially soldiers, from their actual application.

Michael Ignatieff

#88. Make no mistake. This is a war on rural America ... It is chilling to watch people who joined the military to defend American citizens point rifles on American soil at American citizens and women and children. A sniper rifle is not due process.

Matt Shea

#89. The Democratic Party might be called the Takings Coalition, made up of groups that want the government to take from American citizens
usually cash
and keep it for itself.

Grover Norquist

#90. With Storytelling, at least, it's explicit: this is what the censors say American citizens, no matter what age, are not permitted to see, even though it can be seen by other people all over the world. I suppose you could call it a political statement.

Todd Solondz

#91. An estimated 9,000 American citizens are killed every year by illegal aliens. That's 25 American citizens per day killed by illegal aliens, averaging 12 by stabbings and shootings and 13 by DUI and related crimes.

Russell Pearce

#92. Learning from the American experience, governments around the world have developed national innovation policies and programs to accelerate their economic prosperity and to help their citizens and companies compete globally.

Robert Hormats

#93. A majority of American citizens are now becoming skeptical of the claim that our carbon footprints, resulting from our use of fossil fuels, are going to lead to climatic calamities. But governments are not yet listening to the citizens.

John Coleman

#94. The importation and sale of marijuana is condemned and punished as a serious crime, but we accept as legitimate the manufacture and sale of an infinitely more addictive and deadly drug: the nicotine in cigarettes that cost the lives of 390,000 American citizens last year.

Jimmy Carter

#95. I don't think we should be engaged in nation-building. It's not our job to turn foreign nations into democratic utopias, to try to turn Iraq into Switzerland. It is the military's job to hunt down and kill our enemies, to kill ISIS before they murder American citizens and they wage jihad.

Ted Cruz

#96. The largest untapped constituency in American politics are the 300 million American citizens who have been completely left out of the immigration debate.

Jeff Sessions

#97. The newspaper has debauched the American until he is a slavish, simpering, and angerless citizen; it has taught him to be a lump mass-man toward fraud, simony, murder, and lunacies more vile than those of Commodus or Caracalla.

Edward Dahlberg

#98. In short, the time has come for us as American and Iranian citizens to apply our mutual energy, intellect, and goodwill toward strengthening relations between our two countries, as their destinies are intertwined.

Cyrus Vance

#99. ...citizens of the U.S. live under an Empire of "evil doers" who have set themselves juxtaposed to humanity instilling in us from our youngest days how to slay our human element in exchange for an external existence of malnourished pride.

Steven Storm

#100. By requiring all 30 million Americans age 18 to 25 to perform two years of national service, in the military or civilian life, we will be asking for a shared sacrifice from all American citizens.

Charles B. Rangel