Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent. — Theodore Roosevelt
American style is about confidence, independence, diversity and free expression. — Tommy Hilfiger
Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood - the virtues that made America. — Theodore Roosevelt
that strange conflict in the American character: we pride ourselves on being the melting pot of the world but we insist on regarding most immigrants with suspicion. — Gene Tierney
American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging. — Wallace Stegner
I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me. — Muhammad Ali
America is the story of everyday people who did extraordinary things. A story woven deep into the fabric of our society. — Marco Rubio
We are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions... and shall rise and fall with Americans. — Frederick Douglass
America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description. — Ralph Ellison
America is White and Black and Latino and Asian. America is mixed. America is immigrants. — Jose Antonio Vargas
It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans. — E. J. Hobsbawm
It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans. — Eric Hobsbawm
America is a passionate idea or it is nothing. America is a human brotherhood or it is chaos. — Max Lerner
I have written a song that says: If you ever lose someone dear to you, never say the words, "They're gone," and they'll come back. — Prince
If you can be the best, then why not try to be the best? — Garrett Morgan
Fighting is a sport; if you're not humble it's going to bring humbleness to you. — Mike Tyson
Don't let your struggle become your identity.
It doesn't matter how strong your opinions are. If you don't use your power for positive change, you are, indeed, part of the problem. — Coretta Scott King
Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It's your place in the world; it's your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live. — Mae Jemison
Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else. — Maya Angelou
Don't let your struggle become your identity.
Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionarys life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime. — Angela Davis
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. — Malcolm X
In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe. — Michael Jackson
Deal with yourself as a individual, worthy of respect and make everyone else deal with you the same way. — Nikki Giovanni
What Is An American Quotes
The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it? — H. G. Wells
Fighters find it hard to give up doing what they do best - fighting for a living. — Evander Holyfield
Then, I realized that there is an indigenous presence in the Solar System. It's us. So, then, I got to wondering what would happen if a more technologically advanced society moved next door to us, the way we moved next door to the American Indians. — Sarah Zettel
Don't let your struggle become your identity
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
Baseball, to me, is still the national pastime because it is a summer game. I feel that almost all Americans are summer people, that summer is what they think of when they think of their childhood. I think it stirs up an incredible emotion within people. — Steve Busby
What an exciting super-tomorrow it will be! Americans are today making the greatest scientific developments in our history. That is a promise of new levels of employment, industrial activity and human happiness. — Clarence Francis
Today let your identity be a giant question mark...
Education is not the means of showing people how to get what they want. Education is an exercise by means of which enough men, it is hoped, will learn to want what is worth having. — Ronald Reagan
As you know, I'm an immigrant. I came over here as an immigrant, and what gave me the opportunities, what made me to be here today, is the open arms of Americans. I have been received. I have been adopted by America. — Arnold Schwarzenegger
What Americans don't want to admit ... is that not only is there not a contradiction between state regulation and freedom, but in order for us to actually be free in our social interactions, there must be an extremely elaborated network of health, law, institutions, moral rules and so on. — Slavoj Žižek
I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I've done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier? — Douglas MacArthur
What It Means To Be An American Quotes
And this President wakes up every morning, looks out across America and is proud to announce, 'It could be worse.' It could be worse? Is that what it means to be an American? It could be worse? Of course not. What defines us as Americans is our unwavering conviction that we know it must be better. — Mitt Romney
And children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let 'em know and nail 'em on it. That would be a very American thing to do. — Ronald Reagan
I'm interested in what it means to be an American. I'm interested in what it means to live in America. I'm interested in the kind of country that we live in and leave our kids. I'm interested in trying to define what that country is. — Bruce Springsteen
Defiance, not obedience, is the American's answer to overbearing authority.
Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. — Malcolm X
What we do know is that the planet is going from 7 billion people today to 9 billion. More people want to live like us, drive American- size cars, live in an American-size home, and eat American-size Big Macs. What does that mean? It means that energy demand is going to be going up. — Thomas Friedman
What does it mean to be an American? While each of us may have our own specific answer to that question, we likely can agree on the basic principles of America: freedom, equal opportunity, and rights accompanied by responsibilities. — Ben Nelson
What if the American people woke up and understood that the official reasons for going to war are almost always based on lies and promoted by war propaganda in order to serve special interests.
Writers like Twain, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Russell Banks, Carolyn Chute, Alice Walker, so many others that I read coming up as a writer, that helped form my ideas of what it means to be American - and an American writer. I'm always in conversation with them. — Micah Perks
All Americans deserve an equal crack at what it means to be a - having - having resources in your own home and in your state and in your country. — Michael Eric Dyson
Most of the Jewish writer friends I have are American, and I feel closer to them because they're always obsessed with one issue - identity: what does it mean to be an American Jew? — Etgar Keret
Each generation of Americans must define what it means to be an American. — William J. Clinton
National Identity Quotes
Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples. — Rigoberta Menchu
Knowledge of one's identity, one's self, community, nation, religion, and God, is the true meaning of resurrection, while ignorance of it signifies hell. — Elijah Muhammad
The Palestinian people have no national identity.
I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel. — Yasser Arafat
Globalisation, which benefits only multi-national companies and takes away all sense of local or national pride and identity, is the biggest threat facing all the member states of the EU. — Steve Blake
Europe is my home, Europe is my continent. Europe is where we live. The European Union is a political bureaucratic organization that took away our identity and our national sovereignty. So, I would get rid of the European Union and be a nation-state again. — Geert Wilders
The loss of national identity is the greatest defeat a nation can know, and it is inevitable under the contemporary form of colonization. — Slobodan Milosevic
The loss of national identity is the greatest defeat a nation can know, and it is inevitable under the contemporary form of colonization. — Slobodan Milosević
Theatre has no national identity. It is something for the world, whether it is Irish, English, or French. — Cyril Cusack
You talked about national identity cards and the terrorism bill. We have made a government that has grown used to viewing us as subjects, has grown used to seeing its role as commanding us. — Malcolm Wallop
True peace must be anchored in justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute. — Desmond Tutu
American Culture Quotes
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. — Clark Gable
Violence is black children going to school for 12 years and receiving 6 years' worth of education. — Julian Bond
I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America's culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Americans taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression if necessary. We will be free, by any means necessary. — H. Rap Brown
You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from. — Romare Bearden
Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents. — Alan Dundes
Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans — Ben Shapiro
I don't speak Japanese, I don't know anything about Japanese business or Japanese culture. Apart from sushi. But I can't exactly go up to him and say "Sushi!" out of the blue. It would be like going up to a top American businessman and saying, "T-bone steak! — Sophie Kinsella
I bring quadruple diversity to the Senate: I'm a woman; I'll be the first Asian woman ever to be elected to the U.S. Senate; I am an immigrant; I am a Buddhist. When I said this at one of my gatherings, they said, 'Yes, but are you gay?' and I said, 'Nobody's perfect.' — Mazie Hirono
Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library. — Luther Standing Bear
Cultural Identity Quotes
Living on borders and in margins, keeping intact one's shifting and multiple identity and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element, an "alien" element. — Gloria E. Anzaldúa
For me fashion is an expression of art that is very closely related both to me and to my body. I see it as an expression of identity combined with desire, moods and a cultural setting. — Iris van Herpen
What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three languages, and several cultural traditions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist more authentically if I cut off a part of myself — Amin Maalouf
But if we call ourselves hillbillies, it's a sort of a term of endearment, something that we have co-opted. — James David Vance
Italy advocates the adoption of a legal instrument on cultural diversity, guaranteeing every country the protection of its own historical identity and the uniqueness of its physical and intangible cultural heritage. — Carlo Azeglio Ciampi
Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves; the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his. — James A. Baldwin
To reaffirm the statement on the choosing of my identity, I come from two beautiful cultures which I have embraced, bridged, balanced, and identify with. I am proud to be who I am as a Dine' (Navajo) and Nahilii (African American) woman. Hozho', , & blessings — Radmilla Cody
The agenda is to destroy Russia. Why? Globalists want to replace Putin because he presides over the last major power in Europe that has a national identity, a national language, a national culture that rests on the foundation of orthodox Christianity. — Douglas Macgregor
Mergers are like marriages. They are the bringing together of two individuals. If you wouldn't marry someone for the 'operational efficiencies' they offer in the running of a household, then why would you combine two companies with unique cultures and identities for that reason? — Simon Sinek
I was brought up in many different cultures, moving around all the time, and I find my identity in my songs. I project the identity I want to have throughout the songs that I write. — Mika
American Patriotism Quotes
Do not let anyone claim tribute of American patriotism if they even attempt to remove religion from politics. — George Washington
This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in. — Theodore Roosevelt
But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. — John Adams
America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand. — Harry S. Truman
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president. — Theodore Roosevelt
We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. — William Faulkner
Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I'm not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be. — John Wayne
For no People will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can they easily be subdued, where Knowledge is diffusd and Virtue preservd . On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own Weight, without the Aid of foreign Invaders. — Samuel Adams
There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution — Frederick Douglass
True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth, universal brotherhood and good will, and a constant and earnest striving toward the principles and ideals on which this country was founded. — Eleanor Roosevelt
American Character Quotes
True loyalty is that quality of service that grows under adversity and expands in defeat. Any street urchin can shout applause in victory, but it takes character to stand fast in defeat. One is noise - the other, loyalty. — Fielding H. Yost
Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians. — Charles Krauthammer
There's no substitute for hard work and effort beyond the call of duty. That is what strengthens the soul and ennobles one's character. — Walter Camp
If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished. — Richard M. Nixon
The American mood, perhaps even the American character, has changed. There are few manifestations any longer of the old American self-assurance which so irritated Dickens. Instead, there is a sense of frustration so perceptible that even our politicians have attempted to exploit it. — Archibald MacLeish
I am thorough believer in the American test of character. He will not build high who does not build for himself. — Benjamin Harrison
Football doesn't build character, it reveals character. — Marv Levy
Look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Gentrification and consumerism... have destroyed the character of my favorite American haunts, like North Beach, Berkeley, Venice and Aspen. — Tom Hayden
To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character. — Emma Goldman
Racial Identity Quotes
Vietnamese must be made to feel that they are racial inferiors with no right to national identity. — Wilfred Burchett
By dismantling the narrow politics of racial identity and selective self-interest, by going beyond 'black' and 'white,' we may construct new values, new institutions and new visions of an America beyond traditional racial categories and racial oppression. — Manning Marable
Most whites do not have a racial identity, but they would do well to understand what race means for others. They should also ponder the consequences of being the only group for whom such an identity is forbidden and who are permitted no aspirations as a group. — Jared Taylor
For Filipino Americans, it's a battle for recognition, for identity in a culture where, for the mainstream, Asians tend to fade into a monochromatic racialized 'other.' — Jose Antonio Vargas
A racial community provides not only a sense of identity, that luxury of looking into another's face and seeing yourself reflected back, but a sense of security and support. — Wentworth Miller
The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those boundaries. — Audre Lorde
I look white to a lot of people. And I'm not. I'm African-American. I'm mixed. I like to call myself Mulatto because that definition fits. So, you know, I've dealt with the conflict my whole life between how I look and my actual ethnic and racial identity. — Mat Johnson
I feel like because black Cuban artists don't have the kind of pressure to thematize race in the way that African-American artists do, there's more space for them to do their art without having to discuss it in terms of racial identity. — Rachael Price
Exposing their own humility and vulnerability is one of the most difficult challenges for white antiracist, even after achieving an autonomous white racial identity. — Eileen O'Brien
The demand for racial (and sexual) justice gets reduced to politics of identity - and excoriating the so-called perpetrators of the identity politics. — Michael Eric Dyson
Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what's good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country. — Lewis H. Lapham
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
My intention is not to repudiate an African American identity but perhaps to resist how labels take hold, or to make it as slow a process as possible. That's more my sense of it. — Mark McMorris
Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. — Carroll Quigley
Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can. — Arthur Ashe
In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans. — Jane Smiley
We really only came around to accepting and integrating the propositional dimension of identity into a concept of ourselves at the time of the American Revolution. — Samuel P. Huntington
Since the main problem that American, the Afro- Americans have is a lack of cultural identity. It is necessary to teach [people] that they had some type of identity, culture, civilization before they were brought here. — Malcolm X
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society. — Thomas Jefferson
The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We can speak any language we want at the dinner table, but English is the language of public discourse, or the marketplace and of the voting booth. — S. I. Hayakawa
In the Shadow of Slavery covers two and a half centuries of black life in New York City, and skillfully interweaves the categories of race and class as they affected the formation of African American identity. Leslie Harris has made a major contribution to our understanding of the black experience. — Eric Foner
Israel is the representative of the United States in the Middle East. Its policies are so integrated with American policies that they use the same language. If you read Sharon's statements and George W. Bush's statements, they're virtually identical. — John Pilger
I wish every American explored the importance of novel writing, identity, honesty, character and place in fresh-ass ways. — Kiese Laymon
I've never felt more American than I did when I moved to England. It becomes a real kind of part of your identity: "Oh, Ben. He's the American guy." I think when you say you're from New York you get a different reception then if you just say, "I'm American." So I'd always kind of make sure I was a New Yorker first. — Ben Schnetzer
People say we're all identical, but Jennifer Lopez is an American. She's from New York. She doesn't have an accent. Some of these Latin people - their Spanish is pathetic. They learned it when they became famous as Latinos. — Salma Hayek
Individualism and mobility are at the core of American identity — Deborah Tall
Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"-- they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity. (p. 107-108) — Cornel West
Canadians were the first anti-Americans, and the best. Canadian anti-Americanism, just as the country's French-English duality, has for two centuries been the central buttress of our national identity. — Jack Granatstein
I was confident about America and the idea that in America people can become American without masking their ethnic identity. — Zbigniew Brzezinski
Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what's good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country. — Travis Scott
Guns are part of the American identity. — Henry Rollins
We are a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. That's what makes us Americans. When we sign onto that belief, we sign onto the core American identity, and that's very deep in us. — Daniel Fried
American society is now remarkably atomized. Political organizations have collapsed. In fact, it seems like even bowling leagues are collapsing. The left has a lot to answer for here. There's been a drift toward very fragmenting tendencies among left groups, toward this sort of identity politics. — Noam Chomsky
After 9/11, I knew I wanted to write about power and identity and the way Americans on all sides of the political spectrum often mythologize our leaders, which are themes that the superhero genre has always handled really well. — Brian K. Vaughan
Now multitudes of root words are identical in the American languages over vast areas some of them with precisely the same senses, and others with various shades of analogical meaning. — John W. Dawson
The other aspect of American identity worth focusing on is the concept of America as a nation of immigrants. That certainly is a partial truth. But it is often assumed to be the total truth. — Samuel P. Huntington
Could it be that violence is as much a part of the American identity as the Constitution, and a vital component to its economic stability? — Henry Rollins
Like any group that has endured much, African Americans have created a strong and mutually reinforcing sense of group identity. That's not a bad thing in and of itself. — J. C. Watts
Blackness also has positive dimensions, those that bear the political meanings of African American people, among other blacks, who have struggled for self-determination and freedom for centuries. The absence of such an identity doesn't automatically guarantee that we will be free of the images and ideals that fuel stereotypes about black identity. Changing the name will not alter the reality. — Michael Eric Dyson
Blackness is not simply a reactionary title or identity; that is indeed the "negative" way of characterizing African American identity. — Michael Eric Dyson
What does it mean to be an American today? The question of that is always pointing at now. It allows someone to say what lens that will be through. A lot of my work has been about identity in different ways. Part of that for me falls into the question of gender identity certainly but also about what it means to be an American theater artist. — Will Davis
What happens with identity politics sometimes is there's a competition among the oppressed: You're more oppressed than me and if not, then unfortunately you may not receive as much attention. What we need to do is make sure we're focusing on what our core American values are, and ensure that everyone feels as though we are in this together. — Sam Rasoul
Regardless of the Islamophobia, where we have gone wrong in the Democratic Party and the American left is to play wholeheartedly into identity politics, which divides us just as much as it can unite us. We need to take a long hard look. We can celebrate our identities and our heritage, we can understand, you know, but we don't need to be melting pot. We can be a solid ball with all the different pieces. — Sam Rasoul
You bring up identity politics and I think that this is really causing a divide in the American left where we're rallying too much around identities. We should celebrate our heritage, we should organize by identity, but we shouldn't advocate and push for certain identities. We shouldn't talk about women suffrage, or plight of Muslims, or refugees; we should talk about our common American values. — Sam Rasoul
We've got to get back to a sense of an American identity, and that identity is not nationality or religion or ethnicity. It is a particular idea, and that idea is that you should live in liberty and you should be able to pursue happiness. — Condoleezza Rice
The notion that -- which some people are trying to suggest, that by asking for the identity of an American person, that is the same as leaking it, is completely false. There's no equivalence between so-called unmasking and leaking. — Susan Rice
I identify as African American. I identify as Black. Black is something I share with other descendants of Africa, African-American is something I share with other Black descendants of America and both of those identities are of equal importance to me. — Jamilah Lemieux
Identity is very personal...identity is political. My identity is what is and it is what it's gonna be. And I don't think that any information will change that profoundly...I [already] know that I am a Black woman, and a Black woman who has mixed some heritage, like most African Americans. — Jamilah Lemieux
There's that older poem of John Ashbery's-"America"-with the pun "I'm a wrecker," so wreckage and building out of the ashes of that. We're haunted by the genocide that is America, the decimation of so many native cultures. As a mix-blood European ancestry American, you're a nexus of all those violences, and yet there's a relative personal identity as well. — Anne Waldman
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