United States

"Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that."

"Through the violence, chaos and heartache of war, through deprivation and cruelty and loss, we are always Americans, and different, stronger and better than those who would destroy us."

"The American public thinks someone is watching over them. Generally they think someone’s in charge and going to make sure bad things don’t happen. Our oversight system in our country is so broken and so untrustworthy"

"Riley: “No stealing”? Don’t you always say theft in America is justified because the whole country is stolen land?"

"By the time of the Gettysburg Address, in November 1863, the North was fighting for a 'new birth of freedom' to transform the Constitution written by the founding fathers, under which the United States had become the world's largest slaveholding country, into a charter of emancipation for a republic where, as the northern version of 'The Battle Cry of Freedom' put it, 'Not a man shall be a slave'."

"After US troops have withdrawn from Afghanistan, Europe must define its own security interests more clearly. It has been seen that America is no longer unconditionally ready to take on a leadership role anywhere in the world."

"America - a conservative country without any conservative ideology-appears now before the world a naked and arbitrary power, as, in the name of realism, its men of decision enforce their often crackpot definitions upon world reality. The second-rate mind is in command of the ponderously spoken platitude. In the liberal rhetoric, vagueness, and in the conservative mood, irrationality, are raised to principle. Public relations and the official secret, the trivializing campaign and the terrible fact clumsily accomplished, are replacing the reasoned debate of political ideas in the privately incorporated economy, the military ascendancy, and the political vacuum of modern America."

"The American elite does not have any real image of peace — other than as an uneasy interlude existing precariously by virtue of the balance of mutual fright. The only seriously accepted plan for peace is the full loaded pistol. In short, war or a high state of war-preparedness is felt to be the normal and seemingly permanent condition of the United States."

"I've got nothing against any individual American, except that there aren't any. They're always Irish-American, African-American–there's never an American-American you can blame!"

"I wasn't born in America, but I got here as fast as I could."

"America means fair play for all men."

"Far from there being a consensus on the acceptance of slavery, sectional differences between the north and the south about the practice of it existed, and were subject of political contentions, from the beginning of the American nation!"

"I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in our way."

"If Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But I know that Israel does not stand alone. I know that America stands with Israel."

"The image has changed from liberator to great disruptor to a ."

"The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America - the chance to help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil, and onto that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization. If we succeed, generations to come will say of us now living that we mastered our moment, that we helped make the world safe for mankind. This is our summons to greatness. I believe the American people are ready to answer this call."

"Tech is a cultural fork of the US establishment, just as the US itself was a fork of the British Empire. It’s the same root, different branches."

"We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America. There's the United States of America."

"America has never come easy. Our freedom, our democracy, has never been easy. Sometimes we stumble; we make mistakes. We get frustrated or discouraged. But for more than two hundred years, we have put those things aside and placed our collective shoulder to the wheel of progress: to create and build and expand the possibilities of individual achievement; to free other nations from tyranny and fear; to promote justice and fairness and equality under the law, so that the words set to paper by our founders are made real for every citizen. The America we want for our kids. A rising America where honest work is plentiful and communities are strong; where prosperity is widely shared and opportunity for all lets us go as far as our dreams and toil will take us. None of it is easy."

"That's always the case; America leads. We are the indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else has. Our military is the best in the history of the world, and when trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don't call Beijing. They don't call Moscow. They call us. That's the deal... When there's a typhoon in the Philippines, take a look at who's helping the Philippines deal with that situation. When there's an earthquake in Haiti, take a look at who's leading the charge making sure Haiti can rebuild. That's how we roll, and that's what makes this America."

"Our best corporate citizens are also our most creative... Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn’t deny Sputnik was up there. We didn't argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight, and twelve years later, we were walking on the moon. That spirit of discovery is in our DNA. We're Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers and George Washington Carver. We're Grace Hopper and Katherine Johnson and Sally Ride. We're every immigrant and entrepreneur from Boston to Austin to Silicon Valley racing to shape a better world. And over the past seven years, we've nurtured that spirit...The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It's not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined. Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world. No nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that's the path to ruin. Surveys show our standing around the world is high... When it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead;?they call us... The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith."

"But today, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, more than 50 years after the end of 'separate but equal', when it comes to getting an education, too many of our young people just can’t be bothered. Today, instead of walking miles every day to school, they're sitting on couches for hours playing video games, watching T.V. Instead of dreaming of being a teacher or a lawyer or a business leader, they're fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper. Right now, one in three African American students are dropping out of high school. Only one in five African Americans between the ages of 25 and 29 has gotten a college degree; one in five."

"I think your eccentricity as a nation is more evenly distributed than you give it credit for. There are freaks everywhere. Sure, there’s an intense flavor in the Deep South, but it’s not like you’re ever just a mile or less away from a complete lunatic in this country."

"America is the only heaven on earth; is the place closest to the heavenly experience."

"Now we are doing imperialism with a black face."

"America is too large and too abstract to generalize about."

"I found that many Americans did not even know that a country named Iran existed, let alone what it was like. Even among the diplomatic corps and among well-educated people, there was a vagueness about who the Iranians were or what the culture was, a tendency to confuse Iran with Iraq or to mistakenly assume that Iran is an Arab country simply because it is an Islamic nation. This fuzziness about the world outside is unique to America; among the intelligensia of European countries, for example, there is generally a higher level of awareness and information regarding cultures other than their own."

"I am continually amused by the Communist argument that the United States tries to prevent the less-developed countries from industrializing in order to keep them subservient to herself. In our extended dealings with the American aid authorities, we have never found this to be the case; on the contrary, they have helped us with a wide variety of industrial projects, including those that compete directly with American industries. The Americans have enough sense to prefer strong and prosperous friends, and they realize that their most lucrative international trade is with other highly industrialized countries, not with weak and backward ones."

"Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them. A man can distinguish himself between temper and principle, and I am as confident, as I am that God governs the world, that America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign dominion. Wars, without ceasing, will break out till that period arrives, and the continent must in the end be conqueror; for though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire."

"It is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged... We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in."

"I’m an American. I don’t feel national pride or anything like that, but on the other hand I’m very interested in this country. I’m very interested in the history of it, and I feel that it does have some valuable ideas that really have transformed many people. Certainly this is true when I think of my own parents coming here and all the other immigrants who have come here. They came for a reason, and they were satisfied, one way or the other."

"If you look out that window, it’s so amazing, and the countryside is being murdered. People don’t understand what is being done to their countryside. In some parts of the world, they seem to understand it better than here. Here we don’t seem to get it that the fields are being wrecked by poisons and the air is close to the end of breathable. There is a great effort in America to stay happy and not worry and not understand and not do anything about it."

"Whoever is fortunate enough to be an American citizen came into the greatest inheritance man has ever enjoyed. He has had the benefit of every heroic and intellectual effort men have made for many thousands of years, realized at last. If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish."

"The American state is just a shell for a conglomerate of huge corporations that rule the country and try to dominate the world."

"America is the most moral nation on earth, founded on moral principles."

"America was founded by men who understood that the threat of domestic tyranny is as great as any threat from abroad."

"There's a great deal of criticism about the United States, but there is one thing that nobody criticizes the United States. Nobody thinks the United States went to strike against Iraq in order to gain land or water or oil, nobody thinks America has any ambitions about real estate. As it happened in the 20th century, the American boys went to fight in two world wars, many of them lost their lives. The United States won the wars, won the land, but you gave back every piece of it. America didn't keep anything out of her victories for herself. You gave back Japan, an improved Japan, you gave Germany, an improved Germany, you've heard the Marshall Plan. And today, I do not believe there is any serious person on earth who thinks the United States, whether you agree or don't agree with this strike, has any egoistic or material purposes in the war against Iraq. The reason is, for this strike, that you cannot let the world run wild. And people who are coming from different corners of our life, attack and kill women and children and innocent people, just out of the blue. And I think the whole world is lucky that there is a United States that has the will and the power to handle the new danger that has arrived on the 21st century."

"Americans will always fight for liberty."

"Under the banner of the American flag, there have been brutal injustices, including slavery, the systematic destruction of Native Americans, the imprisonment of Japanese Americans and the disenfranchisement of women. But due to other, far-nobler attributes of the United States of America, and the heroic sacrifices of the Americans who carried the flag into battle, the 'Star Spangled Banner' symbolizes freedom, liberty and equality all over the world."

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."

"In America, Jews live in unprecedented equality and security, and America is Israel's defender. The reason is not just that America is so tolerant a society. America does not merely tolerate Jews and Judaism, it honors them. It does so in large part because the United States is the only country that has long defined itself as Judeo-Christian. There are Christian countries, secular countries, and Muslim countries, but America is the only Judeo-Christian country."

"America-hatred has become a moral litmus test of nations, regimes, and individuals. America represents freedom, a higher quality of life, and a willingness to fight for its values. These qualities are despised by regimes characterized by tyranny and socioeconomic failure, and by individuals in the west who support such regimes or who wish to denigrate America for reasons akin to those of antisemites in their denigration of Jews. With all its flaws, America alone stands between democracy and the ascent of tyranny throughout the world."

"Yet despite all this hatred, America remains the dreamed-for haven of the world's oppressed; and Israel remains and embattled democracy in the midst of authoritarian states, and the birthplace of the kibbutz to which tens of thousands of youth from around the world have turned for a living lesson in human equality. America today with all its imperfections represents a model of something better, fighting for its ideals and in so doing constituting a moral challenge to others."

"Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, the document that articulated the principle of human rights endowed by the Creator, thereby ultimately ensuring the end of slavery, and led to the establishment of the country that has served as the beacon of hope for people of every race and ethnicity. More black Africans have voluntarily emigrated to the United States to seek liberty and opportunity than came to America as slaves... Conservatives view America as President Abraham Lincoln viewed it; as the 'Last Best Hope of Earth'... America gradually became the least-xenophobic, least-racist nation in the world. In no country do people become accepted as full members of the society as do immigrants to America."

"I gazed on the mountains in grandeur majestic, I gazed on the vales—they were fruitful and fair; I gazed with delight on the lakes and the fountains, I gazed on the banner—the eagle was there. "E pluribus unum" exultingly waves, E pluribus unum! what freemen and slaves? The genius of liberty, maiden celestial, Sat nigh that gay banner attempting to smile; Alternately gazing on eagle and fetters, The tears from her eyes trickled down all the while, And she sighed where the banner of liberty waves, o'er traitors, and tyrants, and heart-broken slaves."

"I bow my head to the victims of terrorism. I am highly impressed of the courage of New York residents. The great city and the great American nation are to win!"

"If Malcolm X or the Black Panthers had attempted to set up a separate black state on American soil in the tradition of John Brown, their efforts would have been crushed immediately. ... A nation which, since its founding, has rejected the idea of hereditary entitlements. Slavery and racial discrimination are exceptions to this tradition. Huge, horrific exceptions, but exceptions nonetheless. For all the hypocrisies and bigotries of its citizens and leaders, the United States does promise liberty, equality and justice. The gap between these promises and realities often yaws wide, but the promises abide. They are part of the 'American Dream', the 'American Creed', and the American 'civil religion', which no amount of 'realism' or cynicism seems able to smother."

"No group in American history has had more reason to disbelieve America's promises than African Americans... Imbued with Christianity and the American Creed, most black Americans rejected the appeals of socialists in the late nineteenth century, Communists in the 1930s, and neo-Marxist 'liberationists' in the 1960s. Rather, when America's unpaid 'promissory note' came due in the 1950s and 1960s, they marched forth from Christian churches to demand fulfillment of the very American promise that 'all men are created equal'. And faith in the redeemability of America's promises remains in the African-American community today, sustaining efforts to overcome continued segregation, unjust incarceration and enduring economic inequality."

"Discrimination against the Negro race in this country is unjust, is unworthy of a high-minded people whose example should have a salutary influence in the world."

"The Union forever! Hurrah, boys! Hurrah! Down with the traitor, and up with the star!"