Greatest American Quotes

#1. 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' is, to my mind, the greatest American animated series ever produced. The characters lived and breathed.

Gene Luen Yang

#2. Freedom of speech is one of the greatest American liberties, and I hope this pardon serves as a reminder of the precious freedoms we are fighting to preserve as we continue to wage the war on terror.

George Pataki

#3. Since I can't write the greatest American novel, I'm going to write the longest American novel.

Thomas Steinbeck

#4. And perhaps most important, he gave the nation the idea of American progress - the animating spirit that the future could be better than the present or the past. The greatest American politicians since have prospered by projecting a Jeffersonian vision that the country's finest hours lay ahead.

Jon Meacham

#5. For 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona,' for example, Woody Allen is one of the greatest American directors, and we really had a very good working relationship. We understand each other really well. He gave me one of the best opportunities somebody has ever given me in my career.

Penelope Cruz

#6. My family has schoolteachers and librarians, and I think people who teach are probably some of our greatest American heroes. Certainly, underpaid and unsung.

Nick Offerman

#7. Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was belief in facts.

John Gunther

#8. I may not be the greatest American, but I am a better American than all the people born in Canada that still live in Canada. I wish Justin Bieber were one of those people.

Jarod Kintz

#9. Jazz is the greatest American art form and our greatest export. We don't pay attention to the youth of jazz, don't stoke the fires creatively for the youth coming up. I feel like jazz musicians became too much of purists - with Donald Byrd doing funk jazz in the '70s.

Talib Kweli

#10. I don't want to be an English actor doing the greatest American accent you've ever heard. I want to be an American doing nothing.

Michael Caine

#11. The two endorsements I'm most proud of come from Isabel Wilkerson and Toni Morrison. The latter is the greatest American fiction writer of our time, and the former is on her way to being the greatest American nonfiction writer of our time.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#12. For instance, I love the movie Casablanca. Who doesn't? No matter how many egghead critics declare Citizen Kane to be the greatest American movie, we all know it's Casablanca in fact.

Andrew Klavan

#13. The greatest American superstition is belief in facts.

Hermann Graf Keyserling

#14. In Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known - and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the New World to the Old.

Winston Churchill

#15. For me, 'Moby-Dick' is more than the greatest American novel ever written; it is a metaphysical survival manual - the best guidebook there is for a literate man or woman facing an impenetrable unknown: the future of civilization in this storm-tossed 21st century.

Nathaniel Philbrick

#16. One single great player doesn't make anything for a team; it has to be a team. I think [American] football is the greatest team sport there is because you have to depend on your brother next to you.

Tim Tebow

#17. I think the greatest thing about America is the American Dream.

Wyclef Jean

#18. 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

#19. Living in the midst of abundance we have the greatest difficulty in seeing that the supply of natural wealth is limited and that the constant increase of population is destined to reduce the American standard of living unless we deal more sanely with our resources.

Wallace Carothers

#20. We cheer everyone who goes off to Hollywood and tells American stories but telling Australian stories is the greatest thing you can do.

Yahoo Serious

#21. Today, the greatest challenge facing American evangelicals is not persecution from the world, but seduction by the world.

C.J. Mahaney

#22. Get ready the greatest new educational facility at the approximate dynamic population center of the North American continent

R. Buckminster Fuller

#23. The greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison Edison's first major invention, in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented.

Dave Barry

#24. The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability.

David Platt

#25. The office of President is a great one; to every true American it seems the greatest on earth. And to me, as I was engaged in weaving a background of music for the pageantry of it, there came a deeper realization of the effect of that office on the man.

John Philip Sousa

#26. In this nation, the greatest of all nations, there are no second-class families. That is our great American conviction.

Benjamin Todd Jealous

#27. The other Clans will soon arrive. The greatest times of our family are before us. And so are the darkest.

P.J. Parker

#28. We talk about the American Dream, and want to tell the world about the American Dream, but what is that Dream, in most cases, but the dream of material things? I sometimes think that the United States for this reason is the greatest failure the world has ever seen.

Eugene O'Neill

#29. For centuries, New York has served as the gateway for millions of people from all over the world in search of the American dream. It only makes sense that it would now serve as a gateway for the world's greatest athletes.

Hillary Clinton

#30. Forty years after the greatest scandal of the American presidency, Elizabeth Drew's account in Washington Journal remains fresh and riveting, instructive and evocative. Her afterword on Nixon's post-Watergate life is equally compelling.

Tom Brokaw

#31. The greatest promotion I ever had on a newspaper was when 'The Washington Post' suddenly promoted me from city-side general assignment reporter to Latin American correspondent and sent me off to Cuba. Fidel Castro had just come to power. It was a very exciting assignment, but also very serious.

Tom Wolfe

#32. We are all allowed to support whoever we'd like to in this country. That's the greatest part about being an American - one of them, that is; you know what I mean?

Tyler Perry

#33. Well, I'm proud to say American Pie was the kind of crazy, gross-out film that guys thought was the greatest.

Jason Biggs

#34. Cormac McCarthy's language is perfect. He is in my view the greatest living American prose stylist.

Tommy Lee Jones

#35. And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.

Neil Gaiman

#36. Broadway remains the closest thing we have to a national theatre, the place where the greatest number of people can potentially see new work. For an American playwright to say it doesn't matter is simply to capitulate to the current situation.

Tony Kushner

#37. What city has given the world more in terms of American culture than New Orleans? There is none. Not New York. Not L.A. Not Chicago. Not anywhere, in the sense that African American music has gone around the world twenty times over, and it's continuing to evolve. It is our greatest cultural export.

David Simon

#38. American radio is the reverse of the Shakespearean stage. In Shakespeare's time the world's greatest dramas were acted with the most primitive technical arrangements; on the American air the world's most primitive writing is performed under perfect technical conditions.

George Mikes

#39. It was an injured worker finding a lawyer on a contingent fee in a little town in Texas that blew the top off one of the greatest industrial disasters in American history.

Ralph Nader

#40. The seat of the greatest patriotic loyalties is in the stomach. Long after giving up all attachment to the land of his birth, the naturalized American citizen holds fast to the food of his parents.

Vicki Baum

#41. Their latest label for religious people is "American Taliban." The left loves it. It's meant to denigrate Christians as potential threats to world peace (although the greatest threats of the last century, Nazism and communism, were both secular).

Ben Shapiro

#42. Your American admiral said that he held me in the highest esteem, and thought that I conducted my defense perfectly. He said through his chief of staff that my conduct was beyond reproach and he had the greatest admiration for me.

Karl Donitz

#43. I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.

Larry Bird

#44. Network marketing is really the greatest source of grass-roots capitalism, because it teaches people how to take a small bit of capital, that is your time, and build the American dream.

Jim Rohn

#45. President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.

Clint Eastwood

#46. Bobby Fischer's current state of mind is indeed a tragedy. One of the worlds greatest Chess players - the pride and sorrow of American Chess

Frank Brady

#47. American supremacy is the greatest threat to the world today.

George Soros

#48. And the American people are the greatest people in the world. What makes America the greatest nation in the world is the heart of the American people: hardworking, innovative, risk-taking, God- loving, family-oriented American people.

Mitt Romney

#49. I think the greatest curse of American society has been the idea of an easy millennialism
that some new drug, or the next election or the latest in social engineering will solve everything.

Robert Penn Warren

#50. The ideals of free enterprise and global leadership, central to American conservatism, are responsible for the greatest reduction in human misery since mankind began its long climb from the swamp to the stars.

Arthur C. Brooks

#51. When they the American soldiers came, they found fit comrades for their courage and their devotion ... Joining hands with them, the men of America gave the greatest of all gifts - the gift of life and the gift of spirit.

Woodrow Wilson

#52. Edward Albee, our greatest living playwright, American treasure, who watched Doubt from beginning to end and loved it, all while a bored B. J. Novak slept on him.

Mindy Kaling

#53. Those officers and men who were immediately under my observation, evinced the greatest gallantry, and I have no doubt that all others conducted themselves as became American officers and seamen.

Oliver Hazard Perry

#54. Here was the greatest and most moving chapter in American history, a blending of meanness and greatness, an ending and a beginning. It came out of what men were, but it did not go as men had planned.

Bruce Catton

#55. One of the greatest favors that can be bestowed upon the American people is economy in government.

Calvin Coolidge

#56. The man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents.

Ann Coulter

#57. I hope I'll have the opportunity to debate how we reform and update our immigration system. I will relate my own story and that of the countless immigrants whose American Dream stories have helped build our country into the greatest nation in the world.

Ami Bera

#58. I think to be - for me to be an American is - you know, it's one of the greatest things in the world for - you know, for me just because I've been able to grow up with everything. The freedom. You know, in my eyes this is the greatest country in the world.

Michael Phelps

#59. Gore Vidal has been a friend of mine for years, and he's one of the greatest writers in American history.

Cybill Shepherd

#60. Fly you crows. My father was not a spectacle. He was the greatest man I ever knew. He was my everything.

Stacey Lee

#61. I think American Werewolf in London is the greatest werewolf movie of all time.

David Hayter

#62. Let us never forget the greatest untapped market for American enterprise is right here in America, in the inner cities, in the rural areas.

William J. Clinton

#63. Infantry, Artillery, Aviation
all that we have
are yours to dispose of as you will ... I have come to say to you that the American people would be proud to be engaged in the greatest battle in history.

John J. Pershing

#64. The Oxford English Dictionary is the greatest work of reference ever written, and it's largely the result of a Scotsman who left school at fourteen, and a criminally insane American.

Mark Forsyth

#65. To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.

Calvin Coolidge

#66. A white skin is the greatest blessing that has been enjoyed on American soil.

Mark Emory Elliott

#67. With each passing day, I become more and more convinced that the greatest threat to American freedom is the United States government.

Michel Templet

#68. The American Constitution is the greatest governing document, and at some 7,000 words, just about the shortest.

Stephen Ambrose

#69. The American free market system is the greatest engine for prosperity and opportunity that the world has ever seen. Freedom works.

Ted Cruz

#70. I think the greatest star in American at the moment is Kevin Costner.

Jeremy Brett

#71. Baseball is the greatest of American games. Some say football, but it is my firm belief, and it shall always be, that baseball has no superior.

Thomas A. Edison

#72. American's greatest deficit is no longer found in the federal budget. It is a moral deficit, and it may be found in a polluted and poisoned culture that has become the great enemy within.

Pat Buchanan

#73. The greatest evil of American slavery was not involuntary servitude but rather the narrative of racial differences we created to legitimate slavery. Because we never dealt with that evil, I don't think slavery ended in 1865, it just evolved.

Bryan Stevenson

#74. Barack Obama is one of the greatest politicians in American history.

John Podhoretz

#75. No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution.

Harry Belafonte

#76. What I see as the greatest threat to America is that the American people will put political pressure on their leaders to pull out of Iraq before we should.

Thelma Drake

#77. The American Dream has been defended, in every generation, by the brave men and women willing to fight and die for America. They are our greatest national treasure. They deserve a serious Commander-in-Chief.

Leon Panetta

#78. Social Security is one of the greatest achievements of the American government, protecting our elderly against poverty and assuring young people of a more secure future.

Mark Foley

#79. The greatest demand is not to demand anything, and the greatest service of love is not to turn it into a business: "You kiss me, I'll bring flowers to you. I brought flowers to you, why didn't you kiss me?"-your American way.

Harbhajan Singh Yogi

#80. The greatest obstacle to those who hope to reform American education is complacency.

Diane Ravitch

#81. The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each.

Henry David Thoreau

#82. The greatest heresy in the American Evangelical and Protestant church is that if you pray and ask Jesus Christ to come into your heart, He will definitely come in!

Paul Washer

#83. Iraq is going to go down as one of the greatest blunders in American history.

Scott Anderson

#84. American soldiers were dying in frigid Korea. One of our greatest generals told us that the president and his team were not trying to win. And some strident voices were saying that that was because they didn't want to win,

William J. Bennett

#85. I like to say that Bobby Fischer was the greatest player ever. But what made Fischer a genius was his ability to blend an American freshness and pragmatism with Russian ideas about strategy

Bruce Pandolfini

#86. In my opinion, the greatest single failure of American education is that students come away unable to distinguish between a symbol and the thing the symbol stands for.

Paul Lutus

#87. American power remains today what it was in the Second World War and the Cold War: the greatest force for freedom in the world.

Elliott Abrams

#88. We have the greatest hospitals, doctors, and medical technology in the world - we need to make them accessible to every American.

Barbara Boxer

#89. The greatest public health threat for many American women is the men they live with.

Anna Quindlen

#90. I hope I'm wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy - worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.

Madeleine Albright

#91. Swami Vivekananda: The genuine orator exercises a sort of hypnotism over his audience. I have listened to many orators, Indian, English and American; but Keshub Chunder Sen is easily the greatest of all.

Keshub Chandra Sen

#92. I grew up playing football since the day I could walk; some of my greatest memories of childhood are playing touch football in all kinds of weather with my best friends. That's a part of the American experience that no corporation can destroy.

Greg Graffin

#93. The greatest Americans have not been born yet they are waiting patiently for the past to die.

Saul Williams

#94. The greatest scandal of the century in American psychiatry ... is the growing mania among thousands of inept therapists, family counselors, and social workers for arousing false memories of childhoood sexual abuse.

Martin Gardner

#95. This is the city of dreamers and time and again it's the place where the greatest dream of all, the American dream, has been tested and has triumphed.

Michael Bloomberg

#96. Our American values are not luxuries but necessities, not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself. Our common vision of a free and just society is our greatest source of cohesion at home and strength abroad, greater than the bounty of our material blessings.

Jimmy Carter

#97. African American music can't happen in Germany or in Italy or in Mumbai. If America disappeared off the face of the Earth today, the greatest single cultural loss would be blues, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, rock-and-roll.

David Simon

#98. The greatest propaganda coup of the American Right has been to convince its citizens that we are in the grip of a liberal conspiracy.

Shane Smith

#99. I'm going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I'm an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach.

Sarah Palin

#100. A massive new guest worker program hurts American workers ... If a guest worker program were to provide a path to citizenship, we would be rewarding lawbreakers with the greatest honor our country can bestow - citizenship.

Lamar S. Smith