Quotes on America
...both postive and negative.
“There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure.” Dwight D. Eisenhower
=
“As long as an economic system provides an acceptable degree of security, growing material wealth and opportunity for further increase for the next generation, the average American does not ask who is running things or what goals are being pursued.” Daniel R. Fusfeld
=
“I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.” George Washington
=
“The content and forms of American communications-the myths and the means of transmitting them-are devoted to manipulation. When successfully employed, as they invariably are, the result is individual passivity, a state of inertia that precludes action.” Herbert Schiller
=
“Now the 21st century approaches and with it the inevitability of change. We must wonder if the American people will find renewal and rejuvenation within themselves, will discover again their capacity for innovation and adaptation. If not, alas, the nation’s future will be shaped by sightless forces of history over which Americans will have no control.” John Chancellor
=
“The United States stands at the pinnacle of world power. This is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with primacy in power is joined an awe-inspiring accountability for the future.” Winston Churchill
=
“They know we own their country. We own their airspace. We dictate the way they live and talk. And that’s what’s great about America right now. It’s a good thing, especially when there’s a lot of oil out there we need.” US Brig. General William Looney (sic), Washington Post, 24/6/1996
=
“It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy. Power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy ... The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States.” Boutros Boutros-Ghali
=
“One of the great things about America, one of the beauties of our country, is that when we see a young, innocent child blown up by an IED, we cry.” President George Bush Washington, D.C., Mar. 29, 2006
=
“We support the election process, we support democracy, but that doesn’t mean we have to support governments that get elected as a result of democracy.” President George Bush, Washington, D.C., Mar. 29, 2006
=
“What is the great American sin? Extravagance? Vice? Graft? No; it is a kind of half-humorous, good-natured indifference, a lack of ‘concentrated indignation’ as my English friend calls it, which allows extravagance and vice to flourish. Trace most of our ills to their source, and it is found that they exist by virtue of an easy-going, fatalistic indifference which dislikes to have its comfort disturbed… The most shameless greed, the most sickening industrial atrocities, the most appalling public scandals are exposed, but a half-cynical and wholly indifferent public passes them by with hardly a shrug of the shoulders; and they are lost in the medley of events. This is the great American sin.” Joseph Fort Newman, Atlantic Monthly, October 1922
=
“The debate here isn’t only how to protect the country. It’s how to protect our values. If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America—even those designated as ‘unlawful enemy combatants.’ If you make this exception the whole Constitution crumbles.” Alberto J. Mora, former Navy General Counsel, Feb. 27, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, entitled “The Memo”
=
“It bothers me that the executive branch is taking the amazing position that just on the president’s say-so, any American citizen can be picked up, not just in Afghanistan, but at O’Hare Airport or on the streets of any city in this country, and locked up without access to a lawyer or court just because the government says he’s connected somehow with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. That’s not the American way. It’s not the constitutional way.” Laurence Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard University, source: interview on ABC’s Nightline
=
“Too much and too long we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values to the mere accumulation of material things. The gross national product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America—except whether we are proud to be Americans.” Robert F. Kennedy Biography, political figure and government official, 1925-1968 (Address, University of Kansas, March 18, 1968)
=
“This great and powerful force—the accumulated wealth of the United States—has taken over all the functions of Government, Congress, the issue of money, and banking and the army and navy in order to have a band of mercenaries to do their bidding and protect their stolen property.” Senator Richard Pettigrew, Triumphant Plutocracy, published January 1, 1922
=
“The convention which framed the Constitution of the United States was composed of fifty-five members. A majority were lawyers—not one farmer, mechanic or laborer. Forty owned Revolutionary Scrip. Fourteen were land speculators. Twenty-four were money-lenders. Eleven were merchants. Fifteen were slave-holders. They made a Constitution to protect the rights of property and not the rights of man.” Senator Richard Pettigrew, Triumphant Plutocracy (1922)
=
“The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.” Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th US President, letter 01/10/1917
=
“My urgent advice to you would be, not only always to think first of America, but always, also, to think first of humanity. You do not love humanity if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and hatred. I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personal capital out of the passions of his fellowmen. He has lost touch with the ideal of America. For America was created to unit mankind…” President Woodrow Wilson, To Americans of Foreign Birth, 1915
=
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.” Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th US President Source, Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858 (The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, pp. 145-146.)
=
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.” Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th US President, letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862