What Is American Quotes

#1. Neither my father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, great grandfather or great grandmother, nor any other relation that I know of, or care a farthing for, has been in England these one hundred and fifty years; so that you see I have not one drop of blood in my veins but what is American.

John Adams

#2. What is American music? The most satisfying answer I've come across is that it was a kind of natural comfort with the vernacular which is diverse and regional; it's not one particular set of sounds.

Carlisle Floyd

#3. The best way to get a sense of what kinds of emergencies might present themselves in your community is by contacting local chapters of the American Red Cross or offices of emergency management in the region or state. Most large cities will have their own offices of emergency management.

Irwin Redlener

#4. [Donald] Trump is going to appeal better to African Americans, Hispanics, and others than previous Republican candidates because he's talking about what they want: a fair chance to have a better life economically.

Jeff Sessions

#5. The corporate system dictates what gets made, and the movies are so bad because of the economic structure of Hollywood. The big business takeover of Hollywood is at fault rather than American storytellers - it's what keeps textured movies from getting made.

James Gray

#6. I believe that a contract, or at least an understanding, exists between the American public and the American advertiser concerning what advertising is, what its limitations are and what price people will pay for it.

John O'Toole

#7. I love Britain, I lived there for nine years doing shows and things, but I don't know what a British sensibility is. I'd like to have someone tell me what an American sensibility is.

Frank Oz

#8. I know of nothing more significant than the awakening of men and women throughout our country to the desire to improve their houses. Call it what you will - awakening, development, American Renaissance - it is a most startling and promising condition of affairs.

Elsie De Wolfe

#9. From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.

Diane Wakoski

#10. Well, I think the great tragedy in American politics is what is legal, not what is illegal.

Jack Abramoff

#11. Roy: The immutable heart of what we are that bleeds through whatever we might become. All else is vanity.

Tony Kushner

#12. This book is written for those who want more Jesus. It is for those who are bored with what American Christianity offers. It is for those who don't want to plateau, those who would rather die before their convictions do.

Francis Chan

#13. What I want to do is to make sure that we fully repeal Obamacare. This will be one of the largest spending initiatives we will ever see in our country. And also, it will take away choice from the American people.

Michele Bachmann

#14. Our sense of what American English is has upended our relationship to articulateness, our approach to writing, and how (and whether) we impart it to the young, our interest in poetry, and our conception of what it is, and even our response to music and how we judge it.

John McWhorter

#15. 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

#16. What we have done with the American Indian is its way as bad as what we imposed on the Negroes. We took a proud and independent race and virtually destroyed them. We have to find ways to bring them back into decent lives in this country.

Richard M. Nixon

#17. I mean, the notion that we must love everything in this country or get out and go someplace else is ridiculous. I mean, if you
the best thing a patriotic American can do is to look and be critical and find out what's wrong and try to make it better. That's what a patriotic American does.

Andy Rooney

#18. I'm probably an actor that tends to, instead of putting things on, think about it more in terms of taking away what's not in the character, until I'm left with what is. If that makes sense. That's probably a particularly American way of working, but maybe not. The end of any movie is a readjustment.

Molly Parker

#19. The American work environment has to change, not the women. We should be recognizing that what women are not fitting into is a very narrow, male-dominated workplace of the 1950s.

Anne-Marie Slaughter

#20. What, then, is this new man, the American? They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race, now called Americans, have arisen.

J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur

#21. What constitutes American painting? ... things may be in America, but it's what is in the artist that counts. What do we call 'American' outside of painting? Inventiveness, restlessness, speed, change ...

Arthur Dove

#22. 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

#23. In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color.

Toni Morrison

#24. The fear that you come to a show called 'American Horror Story' with is yours. That being said, I'm glad people are afraid, and I hope that I'm contributing to their fear. I'm really not afraid of my own darkness anymore. I'm not afraid of what I'm capable of.

John Carroll Lynch

#25. Don't talk to me about aesthetics or tradition. Talk to me about what sells and what's good right now. And what the American people like is to think the underdog still has a chance.

George Steinbrenner

#26. Is it a good life, Daddy? Nkiru has taken to asking lately on the phone, with that faint, vaguely troubling American accent. It is not good or bad, I tell her, it is simply mine. And that is what matters.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#27. I've wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations - the atmospheric pressure, you might say - of what it is to be seriously a long-term prisoner in an American prison.

Jack Henry Abbott

#28. What you do to-day that is worthwhile, inspires others to act at some future time.

Marcus Garvey

#29. Oh, I'm all about small business. I think what we've learned from big business and big Wall Street is that unchecked greed and the creation of false value gets us all in trouble. If we look at the American economy, who's really creating value? It's the small businesses.

Robert Herjavec

#30. I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to.

Lulu

#31. The hyphenated American is ridiculous. But that's what we have to put up with. I think that any person that's in the United States is better off here than they would be where they came from.

John Wayne

#32. When you decide you want to become a television writer, you naively assume it's going to be like the writers on the old 'Dick Van Dyke Show.' You'll write something and they'll just put it on TV. But what you quickly discover is that American network television is television by committee.

Jeffrey Klarik

#33. Well that's true, and what is actually happening now is that there are accusations that those records contain conspiratorial information that has been concealed from the American people and that is a dangerous situation that just cannot be tolerated.

Louis Stokes

#34. Privacy is tremendously important. I believe the American people, and all people, should be skeptical of government power, should ask hard questions: What is the authority? What is the oversight? That's the way it ought to be.

James Comey

#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. The Second Amendment comes from the right to protect themselves from slave revolts, and from uprisings by Native Americans. A revolt from people who were stolen from their land or revolt from people whose land was stolen from, that's what the genesis of the Second Amendment is.

Danny Glover

#37. I think that Richard Nixon is a great man and that he is very dedicated to what he does. I had the pleasure of meeting him when I attended the Republican National Convention in Miami. You can really tell that he is willing to go out of his way to help the American people.

Laraine Day

#38. I became an American in 2006. It got me thinking about what is my America and what's my perception of America.

Tracey Ullman

#39. The purpose of American culture is to create a norm, Morris. That means extraordinary people must be leveled, and it happens to Jimmy. He ends up working in advertising, for God's sake, and what greater agent of the norm is there in this fucked - up country?

Stephen King

#40. We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable.
[ The Berlin Crisis: Radio and Television Address to the American People (The White House, July 25, 1961)]

John F. Kennedy

#41. Well, what I will tell you is the support from the world - it's not just an African-American citizen. There are people of all different walks of life who are rallying behind the concerns with the that Sandy was treated because what that says to me is that this is an American issue.

Sharon Cooper

#42. What are you going to do to preserve a tradition that is the peculiar and unique culture that Judaism inculcates? The American Jewish community is not going to survive by lining up against its common enemy.

Arthur Hertzberg

#43. What I really hope for, ultimately, is that the closet will be a non-factor in American politics in a couple of decades.

Kirby Dick

#44. What's amazing is that the taste of American men and international tastes in terms of beauty have essentially stayed the same. Styles change, but our view of beauty stays the same.

Hugh Hefner

#45. To me, the American Dream is being able to follow your own personal calling. To be able to do what you want to do is incredible freedom.

Maya Lin

#46. Benchmarks, yes, we want the Iraqi government to do the things that will show progress. But to say, American troops are going to leave, no matter what's happening on the ground, is surrender. There is no other word for it.

Kay Bailey Hutchison

#47. In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures.

Winona LaDuke

#48. The obesity epidemic among American children is becoming so bad that I think there's a growing realization across the country that we've got to change what we're feeding our kids and that school may be a really good place to start.

Eric Schlosser

#49. I'm not trying to say stop Donald Trump from being elected as his party's nominee. I'm saying that we have a responsibility to raise our voices, to say what he does as an American citizen is pretty destructive to the practice of goodhearted and conscientious politics.

Michael Eric Dyson

#50. One of the problems of not allowing the American people to read what bin Laden has said is that in October 2001 just after the war began in Afghanistan, he gave a speech that had two parts to it.

Michael Scheuer

#51. What is it with this American booty culture? It seems to me to be a form of obsession.

Pippa Middleton

#52. Let's be clear: unless I have profoundly misunderstood its position, I pretty much despise American Libertarianism. Have these people seriously looked at the problems of the world and thought, 'Hmm, what we need here is a bit more selfishness'? . . . I beg to differ.

Iain Banks

#53. A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?
I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true.

Terry Pratchett

#54. What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and '60s: the interstate-highway system, massive funding for science and technology, a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies.

Fareed Zakaria

#55. The great American denial riff is that you can do whatever you like and you always triumph at the end. The world is saying no, you can do what you like, but there are consequences. And maturity is to be able to turn to the consequences and accept them.

George Saunders

#56. 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

#57. American food is not what I'm used to - everything is like three portions.

Estelle

#58. I don't think that American drivers going to NASCAR are taking the easy way out because as I said, the racing is amazing; it's just that it's easier to adapt to what you grow up with. American drivers grow up with NASCAR, they know NASCAR, and that's where they want to go.

Jacques Villeneuve

#59. There is much talk about the American Dream. I recall when the American Dream meant the opportunity to pursue your own goals, your own way. The politicians have perverted the dream to mean new homes and cars and a riskfree world. What happened to the real American Dream?

William B. Abernathy

#60. What the American people want to do is fight a war without getting hurt. You can't do that any more than you can get into a barroom fight without getting hurt ... Unless the American people are willing to send their sons out to fight an aggressor, there just isn't going to be any United States.

Chesty Puller

#61. America?" said Gamesh, smiling. "Roland, what's American to you? Or me, or those tens of thousands up in the the stands? It's just a word they use to keep your nose to the grindstone and your toes to the line. America is the opiate of the people.

Philip Roth

#62. What is remarkable is the polar opposition between the religiosity of the American public at large and the atheism of the intellectual elite.54

Richard Dawkins

#63. A fundamental American question is, 'What's the big idea?'

P. J. O'Rourke

#64. I'd like to meet the man who decided that people do or don't look Jewish. What the hell does that mean anyway? Is it the American penchant for pinning things down, catergorizing, for pigeonholing people? Whatever it is, it's wrong.

Lauren Bacall

#65. I think you need humour and a sense of fun, which is what I try to bring to my books to leaven the danger and action. The ones that really transcend the genre always have a great laugh in them, such as 'Fright Night,' 'Lost Boys,' 'American Werewolf in London' - just to name a few.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#66. What does a good man fall back on when the situation is desperate? His faith, of course. The science of a new century. The love of his friends.

Stephen King

#67. I think what the secretary Hillary Clinton has recognized is the American people are extremely angry about the power of Wall Street, the greed, the illegal behavior of Wall Street.

Bernie Sanders

#68. The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's about what's right. And it's about time.

Dionne Warwick

#69. Nobody is denying we should investigate and do what we can to prevent gun crime in our cities and towns. But, we should not scapegoat the American gun owner for complicated, cultural problems we are just beginning to understand.

Bob Barr

#70. There are people on staff who have made that point, that the upside to a second Bush term is that it makes 'American Dad' work better. To me, the price is too high. I would gladly give up the comedy to have a President Kerry. But you work with what you have.

Seth MacFarlane

#71. What the American Indian Movement says is that the American Indians are the Palestinians of the United States, and the Palestinians are the American Indians of Europe.

Russell Means

#72. To the American people I say, awaken to what is happening. It is the duty of each citizen to be vigilant, to protect liberty, to speak out, left and right and disagree lest be trampled underfoot by misguided zealotry and extreme partisanship.

Robert Byrd

#73. There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law.

Edward Snowden

#74. Anybody who knows me knows I'm passionate about American football. I gave this game everything I had. In college, that's what I looked to do. Everything. Everything for so long, and all you hear growing up is that hard work pays off, hard work pays off, hard work pays off.

La'el Collins

#75. Among the many queer things about the American economy is this: A writer can get more money for a bungling speech at a bankrupt college than he can get for a short-story masterpiece. What's more, he can sell the speech over and over again, and no one complains.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

#76. What gets me about the United States is that it pretends to be honest and therefore has so little room to move toward hope.

Audre Lorde

#77. There clearly is a serious race problem in the country. Just take a look at what's happening to African American communities. For example wealth, wealth in African American communities is almost zero. The history is striking.

Noam Chomsky

#78. I don't know anything about American history or presidents. I don't know what tailgating is! I've never been to an Olive Garden!

Emma Watson

#79. I have no patience for those in the American Jewish community who just go around slandering people as anti-Semites without realizing that what they're doing is really trivializing anti-Semitism.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

#80. Whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship.

Barack Obama

#81. We can't know in advance what history is going to say, but I would be utterly amazed and surprised if American invasion to Iraq from the beginning of its inception, were not judged to be an utter failure and a terrible, terrible thing for the world.

Robert Reich

#82. The American dream is what has kept Americans from rebelling against corporate corruption.Now that 2/3 of us know it's dead, expect anything.

Ziad K. Abdelnour

#83. As an American people, what is greatest about our history are the many times we have led this world away from hate, towards hope.

Benjamin Todd Jealous

#84. The American people deserve to know that their elected leaders play by the exact same rules that they play by and that their lawmakers' only interest is what's best for the country, not their own financial gain.

Kirsten Gillibrand

#85. The male image has been so pulled down by situation comedy in the last 15 years, it is frightening. I don't like what has happened to the American male.

Bill Bixby

#86. An American is a guy, a rich guy with a family, a decent guy with a family with as many kids as he likes, doing what he wants, working with people that he likes, and enjoying himself to his very old age.

Jack Kirby

#87. I told Donald Trump, 'This isn't a campaign, this is a movement.' Look at what's happening. The American people are not happy with their government.

Jeff Sessions

#88. Reagan Declares
Firmness on Gulf;
Plans are Unclear
Isn't that classic? I don't mean the semicolon; I mean, isn't that just what the world needs? Unclear firmness! That is typical American policy: don't be clear, but be firm!

John Irving

#89. I'm an American. I'm for prosperity. I've discovered, from 40 years of reporting, that what creates prosperity is limited government.

John Stossel

#90. I think we ought to talk about what the American people want, and that is jobs and get the economy on track.

John Cornyn

#91. I have Czech, I have Russian, I have English, I have Italian. Uh, what am I missing? A little bit of Irish. The Russian is Jewish. So I'm your classic American mutt.

Joe Lhota

#92. I know Great Spirit is looking down upon me from above, and will hear what I say ...

Sitting Bull

#93. The American people need to know the truth. The American people need to see the truth. In a democracy, letting the people know the truth is the essence of what it means to be free.

Barbara Boxer

#94. It's hard for me to get interested in stories that ignore death, which is what American marketing culture would like to do: pretend that death doesn't exist, that you can buy immortality; just buy these products, and you'll be forever young and happy.

Alan Ball

#95. There's less than one percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than four of five percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with.

Joe Biden

#96. If you don't have any ties to the music industry, you just love 'American Idol,' you can sit there and do exactly what you do in your living room, which is stare at them and judge them.

Neil Patrick Harris

#97. The six and one-fourth hours' television watching (the American average per day) which non-reading children do is what is called alpha-level learning. The mind needn't make any pictures since the pictures are provided, so the mind cuts current as low as it can.

Carol Bly

#98. What I would really like to have been, given a perfect world, is a jazz pianist. I mean jazz. I don't mean rock and roll. I mean the never-the-same-twice music the American black people gave the world.

Kurt Vonnegut

#99. I like motivational books, because I like the go-getting American spirit - your destiny is in your own hands, life is what you make it, don't accept your limitations, jump before you're pushed, leap before you look.

Louise Mensch

#100. My job is to continue to work very hard, to make sure the American people understand who I am, what I believe in, what I'll fight for. It's why I have been so accessible to the press.

Carly Fiorina