Americans Need Quotes

#1. The existence of the Taliban, in my view, is a tragedy for Afghanistan. We as Americans need to understand our role in helping bring that tragedy about. So I think it's important to look at the stories about why these people are fighting.

Anand Gopal

#2. Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.

Bertrand Russell

#3. Americans need to face the truth about themselves, no matter how pleasant it is.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

#4. I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?

Joni Mitchell

#5. Every single one of us as Americans need to remember that freedom did not come free, as we get on our knees tonight, thank God we live in a country where people are trying to break into, and not a country people are trying to break out of.

Mike Huckabee

#6. I think it's hard for an outsider to capture the flavor of a community and all its nuances, so ultimately Haitian-Americans need to start sharing intimate accounts of their stories.

Edwidge Danticat

#7. As problems like identity theft become more prevalent, now more than ever, Americans need to take their financial health seriously - and this information is of the utmost importance.

Ruben Hinojosa

#8. Americans need bullshit the way koala bears need eucalyptus leaves. They've become totally addicted to it. They get so much of it back home that they can't survive without it.

Michael Moorcock

#9. We [americans] need to control our border just like people have to control who goes in and out of their house.

John Kasich

#10. First, I think more Americans need to declare their independence from partisan politics on both sides. The more that Americans declare their independence, the more the parties will have to compete for their votes using reason rather than the hateful appeals.

John Avlon

#11. Americans need to understand the significance of having their civil liberties dismantled. It doesn't just affect terrorists and foreigners, it affects us all.

Bianca Jagger

#12. 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

#13. People should be allowed to express their opinion. But, Americans need to know I'll be making up my mind based upon the latest intelligence and how best to protect our own country, plus our friends and allies.

George W. Bush

#14. I think the Americans need to understand that a lot of times the children are bored in school, and that is why they are not staying in.

Melinda Gates

#15. Americans need a champion and I want to be that champion.

Hillary Clinton

#16. Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.

Gouverneur Morris

#17. Don't you see that Americans need the anti-American? While it is better to be loved than hated, it is also better to be hated than ignored.

Viet Thanh Nguyen

#18. Americans need to call on Boomers, in their next act onstage, to behave like grown-ups. And there is no better way for them to do this than to guide young people to lives of greater meaning, effectiveness, and purpose.

Eric Liu

#19. I believe all Americans need to start taking more responsibility for the kind of extreme rhetoric that is permeating our political culture; otherwise, quite frankly, as a country we're screwed.

Meghan McCain

#20. Americans need to see people who are honestly trying to learn from each other, even as we make our own points powerfully and fight for our own values and policies.

Van Jones

#21. It has been observed that all Americans need a frontier: pain was hers, and she was determined to push it out.

Salman Rushdie

#22. The bill that job creators and out-of-work Americans need us to pass is the one that ensures taxes won't go up - one that says Americans and small-business owners won't get hit with more bad news at the end of the year.

Mitch McConnell

#23. In order to change the direction of this country, we need to change presidents. Americans need a conservative businessman to get this economy moving again, not career politicians. That is why I am running. Next week, I will lay out my specific plan to put America back to work.

Mitt Romney

#24. Americans need accurate information in order to consider Social Security reform. Too bad the media can't be counted upon to provide it

Herman Cain

#25. This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America. Our opponent is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country. Americans need to know this.

Sarah Palin

#26. Straight Americans need an education of the heart and soul. They must understand - to begin with - how it can feel to spend years denying your own deepest truths, to sit silently through classes, meals, and church services while people you love toss off remarks that brutalize your soul.

Bruce Bawer

#27. Conservatives are better talking about opportunity and growth in the abstract, while liberals talk more about poor people. We [americans] need a good, optimistic, conservative opportunity ideology that is totally geared toward lifting up the poor. That's what I most want to see in candidates.

Arthur C. Brooks

#28. Americans need to develop a "habit of mind" that includes reading books.

David Souter

#29. All Americans need a sense of place. That's what makes our physical surroundings worth caring about.

Ed McMahon

#30. I am heartbroken by the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in my home state. Like so many Americans I am watching the news reports with great sadness. But it's at times like these that each of us must work together to provide lifesaving aid to those in terrible need.

Tim McGraw

#31. You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#32. But the question we should ask ourselves is, who is the next visionary leader of America? How do we have the aspiration and inspire Americans to reach their highest level? We need a president that does so.

Tim Scott

#33. Considering what Americans have been confronted with in the last ten years, domestically and internationally, it's clear that we need emotional outlets; we have to have some peace from our problems.

Pete Rozelle

#34. We need to quit subsidizing the costs for illegal immigrants' residency in America immediately. How long will we allow them to siphon millions upon millions from honest taxpaying Americans by supporting their health care, welfare, education and criminal expenses?

Newt Gingrich

#35. My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis, it's not a political issue, it's a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act, that's a renewable resource, let's renew it.

Al Gore

#36. For generations, Americans have expected something new and better in their lives with every passing day - something that will make life a little more fun to live and a little more enlightening to behold. Exploration accomplishes this naturally. All we need to do is wake up to this fact.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#37. How can it be, in a country as strong and rich as this one, that tens of thousands of Americans who need legal representation are turned away every year because their government won't support the very program designed to help them?

Ron Wyden

#38. Before we're Americans, we're Christians. And so we have to be informed by a certain moral sense, which means that we need to speak up for moral principle and for gospel principle regardless of who that offends.

Russell D. Moore

#39. We need to continue investing in the programs that put Americans back to work in communities like Clark County.

Maria Cantwell

#40. New Rule: Americans have to come up with a better cheese to represent the nation than American cheese. I'm not even sure American cheese is cheese. I think it's aged Jell-O. And it doesn't need to be individually wrapped in plastic, either. You're thinking of condoms.

Bill Maher

#41. North Americans as a whole need to embrace having clothes altered to their body. I hear it all the time: why do the Europeans always look so good? They have a relationship with their tailor and spend the time and money to make their clothes look their best.

Michael Kors

#42. Mr. Speaker, Americans want, need, and rightfully expect Congress to protect them from the prying eyes of identity thieves and give them back control of their Social Security numbers and personal health information.

Luis Gutierrez

#43. Americans have long recognized the need to protect our public lands and their vast resources.

Barbara Boxer

#44. When the Americans were trying to conquer the Navajos, they felt this need to capture Canyon de Chelly like it was the Navajo capital. It was a meeting place and a sanctuary of last refuge. To control Canyon de Chelly was to control the Navajo people.

Hampton Sides

#45. Black children need to see their lives reflected in the books they read. If they don't, they won't feel welcome in the world of literature. The lives of African-Americans are rich and diverse, and the books our children read should reflect that.

Valerie Wilson Wesley

#46. Many of us believe that we need health care reform. That being said - Americans felt like they weren't being listened to. There were a lot of people across the political spectrum who said we don't want a one-size-fits-all healthcare plan.

Timothy Griffin

#47. There's a lot of Americans, black and white, who think that we've arrived where we need to be and nothing else needs to be done and affirmative action needs to be dismantled.

Spike Lee

#48. We should set a national goal of making computers and Internet access available for every American ... we must help all Americans gain the skills they need to make the most of the connection.

William J. Clinton

#49. To say that the Afro American created jazz doesn't mean anything bad about Anglo Americans, and I always teach my younger jazz musicians that at this point the entirety of the American tradition is your heritage, and you need to know it.

Wynton Marsalis

#50. Regardless of what others may tell you, you only need two Mexican-Americans for a Mexican standoff.

Alejandra Diaz Mattoni

#51. Americans are already paying the price for record heat waves, dirty air, and an unstable climate. We need to fight these threats with every weapon we have, and the electricity industry has to do its fair share.

Frances Beinecke

#52. I once heard a Chicago-area pastor put it this way: we don't need more Americans bowing down to the Democrat donkey or the Republican elephant. We need more Americans bowing down to the Lion of Judah.

Todd Starnes

#53. I am not suggesting that all those missionary organizations working in Haiti should pack up and go home, but I am urging them to understand that Haiti does not need clever Americans with newly contrived schemes for saving their country.

Tony Campolo

#54. I'd say people do need some help with poetry because I think poetry just helps takes us to places that Americans aren't always accustomed to going.

Edward Hirsch

#55. Americans believe in the reality of "race" as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world. Racism - the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them - inevitably follows from this inalterable condition.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#56. There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.

Phil Ochs

#57. There are very few Americans who honestly care who Lindsay Lohan is dating. But it's still information they need to have. This is because those people care about something else entirely; they're worried about the possibility of everyone else understanding something that they're missing.

Chuck Klosterman

#58. We need some great failures. Especially we ever-successful Americans - conscious, intelligent, illuminating failures.

Lincoln Steffens

#59. What middle-income Americans want most of all is a job. We need a generous safety net for the most vulnerable in our society, but for most people the biggest social accomplishment that we can help them achieve is a good-paying job.

Joseph M. Kyrillos

#60. Lawmakers need to be held accountable and should feel the impact of a government shutdown just like many other Americans will.

Debbie Stabenow

#61. The implications of Americans devoting their lives to fast food are more profound than the fact that our kids aren't eating well. There are real repercussions that we need to know about and think about.

Ruth Reichl

#62. We should never forget that Americans continue to advocate for individual liberty, equality and self-governance. We often step in when it's necessary to help countries in need. But our history needs no whitewashing. To attempt this does us a terrible disservice.

Jay Parini

#63. If the Americans like to eat GMO products, let them eat it then. We don't need to do that; we have enough space and opportunities to produce organic food,

Dmitry Medvedev

#64. You have to use what you have in order to get what you need and the people can not be rich unless somebody is rich. The Hip-Hop generation has carried more people with it than any other enterprise Black Americans have had.

Nikki Giovanni

#65. A virulent, aggressive minority has decided that Americans don't know themselves what it is they should see, and need to be protected by people who are wiser than they are, even if they are only a tiny sliver of the population.

Jock Sturges

#66. The truth is we need to build an economy going forward with all of us, when we all move forward and the payment of a national debt is not the responsibility of one group of Americans versus another.

Paul Sadler

#67. The big story of 2013, a very distressing year, is that Americans continue not to be able to find the full-time jobs they need, and that's something which the president has to recognize as the first priority of his administration.

Mitt Romney

#68. We don't think about pilgrimage in this country. We don't think about meditation. The idea of taking a six-week walk is totally foreign to most Americans. But it's probably exactly what we need.

Emilio Estevez

#69. We need more expensive gasoline to change consumer behavior," Mr. Jackson said. Otherwise, Americans will continue to favor big vehicles, not matter what kind of fuel-economy standards the government imposes on auto makers. Four dollars a gallon, he added, "is a good start.

Michael J. Jackson

#70. Americans are inventing something called television, which will be like the cinema, only at home. There'll be no more need for books, or churches, or anything.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#71. When it comes to African Americans and African American actors, Hollywood has always felt that if you can make us laugh, that's fine, but we don't need to see you do a 'Schindler's List,' where there's no jokes or music or comedic through-line.

Hill Harper

#72. Spaniards and Americans are not like Europeans, they are not like Orientals, they have something in common, that is they do not need religion or mysticism not to believe in reality as all the world knows it, not even when they see it.

Gertrude Stein

#73. From the fact that most Americans want others to fund or subsidize their healthcare, it does not follow that they have such a right. A need is not a right. A man's life, liberty and the products of his labor were not intended to be up for grabs by grubby, greedy majorities.

Ilana Mercer

#74. I think what we've had in the past is the government has said, "Well, we need to collect the whole haystack." And the haystack is Americans' privacy. Every Americans' privacy. We have to give up all of our privacy.

Rand Paul

#75. The Arabic states have to be integrated into the Iraqi reconstruction. We need the help of the Arabic community, which understands its culture. Americans arrive, invade, occupy.

Neil Young

#76. Once enough Americans reacquaint themselves with Americanism, we should promote it to all countries just as the Left promotes leftism and Muslims promote Islam. One need not be American to affirm Americanism.

Dennis Prager

#77. We must continue to be diligent in protecting Americans' civil liberties while preserving critical law enforcement tools we need to keep America safe.

Debbie Stabenow

#78. This 21st century economy holds great promise for our people. But unless we give all Americans the skills they need to succeed, countries like India and China will take good-paying jobs that should be ours.

Harry Reid

#79. We need a president who is going to understand what actionable intelligence looks like and act on it. And we need a president and a cabinet who understands that the first and most important priority of the president of the United States is to protect the safety and security of Americans.

Chris Christie

#80. It is vitally important that we implement immigration reform. We need a bill that strengthens our borders and protects this nation, but that also makes it simpler for good people to become Americans.

Dave Reichert

#81. Obama sees everything backward. Where Americans see individual achievement, he sees government's work. Where we see failing companies, he sees innovation worth subsidizing. Where we see the need for economic growth, he sees a need for higher taxes.

Reince Priebus

#82. I think the Egyptian people need to restore confidence that Americans, the U.S., means what they say when they talk about democracy, rule of law.

Mohamed ElBaradei

#83. I think Americans really need to start thinking globally. As resources become more dear, we will be pulled closer to the rest of the world anyway.

Henry Rollins

#84. If Americans want prosperity, we need a grand reawakening to the incontrovertible fact that its source is entrepreneurs unfettered by meddling politicians.

Star Parker

#85. Americans are known for their strength, fortitude, and generosity in times of need. We encourage people in the U.S. and everywhere to give with their hearts, reach out to these victims, and donate what they can to the relief efforts.

Michael Dell

#86. If we are safe today, it is because America has stood with us. If we are to remain safe tomorrow, it will be because America remains powerful and self-confident. When, therefore, the Americans face difficulties, we need to say to them more clearly: We are with you.

Margaret Thatcher

#87. America's leaders need to put their feet in the shoes of working Americans.

Howard Schultz

#88. Broadly Americans agree that women need access to health care to prevent medical disasters and to prevent pregnancy.

Sandra Fluke

#89. The Republicans have chosen to neglect young Americans who need assistance with the costs of higher education.

John Conyers

#90. The idea of self-government is foreign to Americans ... Self-government is a form of self-control, self-limitation. It goes against our whole grain. We're supposed to go after what we want, not question whether we really need it.

Judith Perelman Rossner

#91. We [Americans] really need a system that comprehensively looks at the fact that we need these workers in the United States, we need to be able to provide a pathway to citizenship. We need to be able to allow them to be here legally and to do the work that they are doing and that we need.

Pramila Jayapal

#92. Ted Kennedy devoted his lifetime to protecting those most in need, and tens of millions of Americans have been the beneficiaries.

Bernie Sanders

#93. I think most Americans would agree that we need sensible solutions that fix our immigration system and deal humanely with aspiring citizens currently in our country. At the same time, these solutions must increase the security of our borders.

Linda Sanchez

#94. What else do we need to know about the political establishment than that it refuses to discuss the crimes that terrify Americans on grounds that doing so is racist? Why isn't that true of complex embezzling, which is 100 percent white and Asian?

Ron Paul

#95. We want to develop innovative ways to promote savings so more Americans can save for their future, but first we need to reject privatization schemes and work together to strengthen Social Security.

Debbie Stabenow

#96. The White House is defending President Obama's sports activities over the past week, saying that everyone needs leisure time. Thanks to these economic policies, 9.5 percent of Americans have all the leisure time they need.

Jay Leno

#97. Americans of our own time - minority and majority Americans alike - need the continued guidance that the Voting Rights Act provides. We have come a long way, but more needs to be done.

Elijah Cummings

#98. Conservatives don't need to change core convictions to embrace the growing support for equal rights for gay Americans.

Ken Mehlman

#99. What we need is an education system that works for every child, not a select few. This starts with providing a quality education for our youngest Americans so they can learn, grow, and become prosperous citizens.

Marc Veasey

#100. If we want America to stay on the cutting edge, we need young Americans to master the tools and technology that will change the way we do just about everything.

Barack Obama