Quotes About American Exceptionalism

#1. Obama learned from Ronald Reagan that it helps to strike an optimistic tone. But genuine optimism deriving from American exceptionalism, it turns out, does not come naturally to him.

John Podhoretz

#2. If people are being upstanding citizens of the Republic, then you have to widen the net to incarcerate them. This explains why America's prisons are full of nonviolent offenders - a perfect example of American exceptionalism.

Henry Rollins

#3. Mitt Romney says he believes in America and that he will restore American exceptionalism. I have news for him, we already have an exceptional American as president and we believe in Barack Obama.

John F. Kerry

#4. American exceptionalism is grounded in the founding of the United States upon an idea, rather than upon the ambitions of men.

Monica Crowley

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

Ron Fournier

#6. One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#7. Both Obama and Romney ended up in the wrong place: the former thought American exceptionalism was no longer true and should be given up while the latter thought it was still true. Neither was willing to tell Americans that they were no longer exceptional but should try to be again.

George Packer

#8. The conservative version of American exceptionalism has become a password of sorts for candidates who want to prove their credentials to a right-wing America.

Russ Feingold

#9. The first great skeptic of American exceptionalism, he refused to believe that the country was exempt from the sober lessons of history.

Ron Chernow

#10. It's a deft trick to turn American exceptionalism into an exceptional political tactic.

Ron Fournier

#11. The message for the American youth is that this is a great country and we need to make sure that we pass on a heritage, a lineage and a legacy of American exceptionalism to each and everyone of you so that you can enjoy all the great liberties and freedoms that all the previous generations have had.

Allen West

#12. American exceptionalism, in the broad sense, is not a bunch of braggadocious words people say, "Yeah, we're better people. We have a better country. We are higher class people." That's not what it is. America was the exception to the way human beings prior to America, most of which lived.

Rush Limbaugh

#13. Post World War II America draws a great deal of interest, but the students also seem to know quite a bit about American exceptionalism and its historical roots.

Mohammad Marandi

#14. We're at the crossroads. Down one road is a European centralized bureaucratic socialist welfare system in which politicians and bureaucrats define the future. Down the other road is a proud, solid, reaffirmation of American exceptionalism.

Newt Gingrich

#15. American exceptionalism? Exceptional at what? Waging wars against innocent people for fake reasons? Exceptional at what? Being addicted to pharmaceutical drugs that have people's minds wasted? Exceptional at what? Eating more junk food and becoming the most obese nation on Earth?

Gerald Celente

#16. 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

#17. America's military is the best in the world, but this president [Barack Obama] is hollowing out our military. We need a commander in chief that believes in American exceptionalism again.

Bobby Jindal

#18. I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.

Barack Obama

#19. The notion of American exceptionalism is effective in part because there is little on the face of it that is offensive.

Russ Feingold

#20. American politicians who dwell on American exceptionalism only dishonor us by suggesting we play dumb to our past.

Jay Parini

#21. A lot of liberals don't believe in American exceptionalism, but it doesn't mean they don't love America.

Megyn Kelly

#22. We don't have to apologize for American exceptionalism or western values.

Rick Perry

#23. The human condition for the vast majority of people on this planet for the entire time of what humanity has been here has been bondage and tyranny, dictatorship, pestilence. That's really what American exceptionalism is, when you get right down to it.

Rush Limbaugh

#24. The idea of American exceptionalism doesn't extend to Americans being exceptional.

Maureen Dowd

#25. We can only solve our biggest problems if we come together and embrace the freedoms that our Founding Fathers established right here in Philadelphia, which permitted our ancestors to create the great American exceptionalism that all of us now enjoy.

Michael Bloomberg

#26. When I was in the 9th grade I was flunking out of high school. And that's why I'm so encouraged by the fact that America is the place where opportunity and American exceptionalism is alive and well.

Tim Scott

#27. I didn't have a manifesto. I had some discontent. It seemed to me that midcentury mainstream American science fiction had often been triumphalist and militaristic, a sort of folk propaganda for American exceptionalism.

William Gibson

#28. Here beyond men's judgments all covenants were brittle.

Cormac McCarthy

#29. America is a post-Christian nation only in the sense that we have built a tenement on the foundation of a palace.

Ron Brackin

#30. The erosion of equal opportunity is among the greatest threats to our exceptionalism as a nation. But it also provides us with an exciting and historic opportunity: to help more people than ever achieve the American Dream.

Marco Rubio

#31. Patriotism is being convinced your country is better because you were born in it.

Jacob M. Appel

#32. The greatness of America is capitalism, free market capitalism. The exceptionalism of American business.

Fran Tarkenton

#33. I dont know what happens to country.

Cormac McCarthy

#34. America indeed has become a progressive nation, if we understand "progressive" to mean progressing away from God, his incomparable blessings, and the moral foundation that made America great, and advancing toward a mythical utopia where mankind is in control of mankind (think "Lord of the Flies").

Ron Brackin

#35. One commonly hears that carping critics complain about what is wrong, but do not present solutions. There is an accurate translation for that charge: 'They present solutions, but I don't like them.

Noam Chomsky

#36. Business must be a force for good in the world.

David Cooperrider

#37. There's an appeal to the American sense of exceptionalism, that we're morally superior, as way to not be self-critical. I think that's a bit dangerous.

Al Franken

#38. The Open Road goes to the used-car lot.

Louis Simpson