Quotes About An American Dream

#1. It's absolutely philistine not to recognize what a great book 'An American Dream' is. Norman Mailer is his own worst enemy, and if you don't catch him in a defensive position, he'll admit it. I'd really like to help that man.

Germaine Greer

#2. The Chinese dream is an American dream embedded in a Confucian cocoon.

Patrick Mendis

#3. I was 26 when I invented the wrap dress. It was just a nothing little printed dress made out an jersey, and before I know it, I lived an American Dream making more than 25,000 dresses a week.

Diane Von Furstenberg

#4. If you stop and think about our history, one of the reasons we had an American century and there is an American dream was because at key points in our history we made very bold decisions about making sure that there was very broad, universal access to quality education.

Ken Mehlman

#5. The need for a college education is even more important now than it was before, but I think that the increased costs are a very severe obstacle to access. It is an American dream, and I think that one of our challenges is to find a way to make that available.

Roy Romer

#6. 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

#7. Right now my career is totally schizophrenic, because when an American production like Hitchcock Presents asks to see my work I would never dream of showing them my independent films.

Atom Egoyan

#8. Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People elsewhere tend to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are hostile to mans pretensions.

Arthur Miller

#9. Here in Indiana and in many states throughout the union, we rely on coal to power our homes and provide good-paying middle class jobs - like the one my family relied on when I was a kid. The coal mine helped put food on our table and helped me pursue an education and realize the American Dream.

Larry Bucshon

#10. It was an amazing adventure, it was my dream to be in an American musical ... I really hope you are going to love what you are going to see.

Marion Cotillard

#11. I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream--I see an American nightmare.

Malcolm X

#12. When it comes to the American dream, no one has a corner on the market. All of us have an equal chance to share in that dream.

J. C. Watts

#13. Rand Paul is officially running for president. He even revealed his campaign slogan, which is 'Defeat the Washington machine. Unleash the American dream.' It's hard to tell if he's running for president or doing an infomercial for Bowflex.

Jimmy Fallon

#14. Since Americans are by nature individualistic and entrepreneurial, by definition, then, the socialist program is anti-American, to say nothing of totalitarian. Socialism is an old dream. Some dreams are nightmares when put into practice.

Ben Carson

#15. Love was love, one could find it with anyone, one could find it anywhere. It was just that you could never keep it. Not unless you were ready to die for it.

Norman Mailer

#16. My fellow Americans, this is an amazing moment for me. To think that a once scrawny boy from Austria could grow up to become Governor of California and stand in Madison Square Garden to speak on behalf of the President of the United States that is an immigrant's dream. It is the American dream.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

#17. We felt trapped in two seemingly unwinnable wars, in which a disproportionate share of the fighters came from our neighborhood, and in an economy that failed to deliver the most basic promise of the American Dream - a steady wage.

J.D. Vance

#18. Those who have won the ovarian lottery by being born in an advanced society to loving parents have a special obligation to help restore the American Dream.

George Kaiser

#19. The promise of the American Dream requires that we are all provided an equal opportunity to participate in and contribute to our nation.

Charles B. Rangel

#20. 'Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream' is an intentionally angry film. How could it not be when the chance of an infant dying is five times greater on the Bronx Park Avenue than on Manhattan's Park Avenue just across the Harlem River?

Alex Gibney

#21. An All-American is an ordinary person with an extraordinary desire to excel. You don't get to the top of the mountain by just dreaming. It's nice to dream. But it's the work ethic and pride that makes you get to that mountain top and that level of success.

Dick Vitale

#22. On the surface, I've created a good life. I've lived the American dream. But I am still an undocumented immigrant.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#23. As an educator, I have always striven to see that the fruits of the American Dream are available to all.

James D. Watson

#24. I don't believe that the American dream should be reserved for those who are born into the elite or somehow have been given an advantage over others. My growing-up experience is probably the most important thing that guides my priorities and my work today.

Ken Salazar

#25. One of the things that makes this so topical right now is that I think there are an awful lot of American men - and women, but I'm a man, so that's what I can talk about - who feel the American dream has let them down.

James Purefoy

#26. We are now embarked on another venture to put the American dream to work in meeting the new demands of a new day. Once again we must start where men would improve their society have always known they must begin - with an educational system restudied, reinforced, and revitalized.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#27. The American Dream is still alive out there, and hard work will get you there. You don't necessarily need to have an Ivy League education or to have millions of dollars startup money. It can be done with an idea, hard work and determination.

Bill Rancic

#28. Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

Ronald Wright

#29. I love and admire the American culture and the American dream. I learnt so many things about the American shoe industry and marketing strategies. I caught the secrets of American casual wear, that is elegant and wearable, retro and modern, and mixed it with an Italian touch, luxurious and handmade.

Diego Della Valle

#30. Against the odd's, I have persevered, I am the living attestation of the American dream. I am the extolment of this great nation. I have coffee and cocktails with presidents and dictators. I'm an international figure, a citizen of the world. I've made it.

Don King

#31. I am an undiluted admirer of American values and the American dream and I believe they will continue to inspire not just the people of the United States but millions across the face of the globe.

Margaret Thatcher

#32. The jobs crisis has reached a boiling point, which is why we see Occupy Wall Street protestors crying out for an America that lets all of us reach for the American Dream again - a dream that says if you work hard and play by the rules, you can have a good life and retire with dignity.

John Garamendi

#33. In a large sense, Main Street is the American origin story. It's an evocation of the American creation tale, and the kick is that the American origin story is a never-ending one, a perpetual tale of creation and re-creation, an eternal now.

Leslie Le Mon

#34. The American Dream, the idea of the happy ending, is an avoidance of responsibility and commitment.

Jill Robinson

#35. Another hundred years may pass before we understand the true significance of Apollo. Lunar exploration was not the equivalent of an American pyramid, some idle monument to technology, but more of a Rosetta stone, a key to unlocking dreams as yet undreamed.

Gene Cernan

#36. On an otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American Dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window.

Larry Correia

#37. The American Dream became America's god; wealth and abundance have become the measure of America's success. But - as recent events have shown - we have been living an illusion.

Billy Graham

#38. The American dream means that you have the chance to work hard, get an education and do great things for yourself, for your kids. The great thing in American is it doesn't matter what your last name is, doesn't matter if you're wealthy.

Bobby Jindal

#39. Unless we make education a priority, an entire generation of Americans could miss out on the American dream.

Blanche Lincoln

#40. The United States is no longer first in the world in upward mobility. We can reverse that trend by giving our young children an equal start in life as they begin their journey to fulfill the American Dream.

Madeleine M. Kunin

#41. The new American Dream is about having an interesting life, not making a lot of money.

Penelope Trunk

#42. This team just wasn't good enough today, but they had the unity I always wanted. To have an American team like this has always been a dream of mine.

Bela Karolyi

#43. The American dream has now morphed into an expectation. And if it isn't provided, or if it doesn't happen, then people feel cheated.

Rush Limbaugh

#44. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty

John F. Kennedy

#45. For all the great dreams profitlessly invested in the digital computer, it is nonetheless true that not since the framers of the American Constitution took seriously the idea that all men are created equal has an idea so transformed the material conditions of life, the expectations of the race.

David Berlinski

#46. And you have to remember that I came to America as an immigrant. You know, on a ship, through the Statue of Liberty. And I saw that skyline, not just as a representation of steel and concrete and glass, but as really the substance of the American Dream.

Daniel Libeskind

#47. Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American Dream. And our current government programs, offer at best only a partial solution. They help people deal with poverty, but they do not help them escape it.

Marco Rubio

#48. Monstress is an exhilarating rollercoaster of a book. Deeply funny, heartbreaking, hopeful, philosophical, bawdy, and wise, Lysley Tenorio's stories, written from the underbelly of the American Dream, present one brilliant portrait after another.

Sabina Murray

#49. The American dream is not over. America is an adventure.

Theodore White

#50. 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

#51. A year earlier my parents had moved us out of the city to a split-level on Long Island, their idea of the American dream, which meant it as now an hour-and-a-half commute via the 7:06 Hicksville to Penn Station every morning. (Dark City Lights)

Jonathan Santlofer

#52. I love America for its bourgeois comfort. If I was as heavily in debt as they are, I wouldn't be drinking tea or coffee anywhere. I would be sipping tap water from an old bottle and serving others tea or coffee in a cafe somewhere.

Vann Chow

#53. 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

#54. No on should pass an American in uniform without saying "Thank you, we are grateful." Always mindful that they are prepared to risk all their dreams so that all of us can reach ours.

William Cohen

#55. Just to have the opportunity to play an American in America is a dream come true for me.

Andrew Lincoln

#56. You can't kill America. We're more than a nation. We're a notion. We're an idea. The American Dream. You never heard of the Afghanistani Dream have you. Except by bearded hermetic recluses with a fetish for uneducated women dressed as giant shuttlecocks.

Will Durst