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"America", "US", "USA", and "United States of America" redirect here. For the landmass comprising North, Central, South America, and the Caribbean, see Americas. For other uses, see America (disambiguation).
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The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal union of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the states of Alaska to the northwest and the archipelagic Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also asserts sovereignty over five major island territories and various uninhabited islands. The country has the world's third-largest land area, largest exclusive economic zone, and third-largest population, exceeding 334 million. Its three largest metropolitan areas are New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and its three most populous states are California, Texas, and Florida.
17th century
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- You brave heroic minds
Worthy your country’s name,
That honour still pursue;
Go and subdue!- Michael Drayton, "To the Virginian Voyage", in Poems (1606)
- E pluribus unum
- From many, one.
- Traditional motto of the United States of America. First appeared on title page of The Gentleman's Miscellany (January, 1692). Pierre Antoine (Peter Anthony Motteaux) was editor. Dr. Simetiere affixed it to the American National Seal at time of the Revolution. See Howard P. Arnold, Historic Side Lights (1899). Compare: Ex pluribus unum facere; translation: "From many to make one"; St. Augustine, Confessions, bk. 4, 8, 13
18th century
- No taxation without representation.
- Anonymous political slogan, printed for the first time in The London Magazine (February 1768), with Lord Camden's "Speech on the Declaratory Bill of the Sovereignty of Great Britain over the Colonies"; sometimes attributed to James Otis Jr.
- We must consult Brother Jonathan.
- George Washington's apocryphal reference to his secretary and Aide-de-camp, Colonel Jonathan Trumbull; the phrase, Brother Jonathan, later came to mean the American people, collectively
- The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru.
- Horace Walpole, English art historian, writer, antiquarian and politician in a letter to Sir Horace Mann (November 24, 1774)
- A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
- Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with America (March 22, 1775); Works, 6 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854–56)
- Young man, there is America—which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.
- Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with America (March 22, 1775)
- The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind... Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America... But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America the law is king... Receive the fugitive and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense (February 14, 1776)
- We are in the very midst of a Revolution, the most complete, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the History of Nations.
- John Adams, Letter to William Cushing (June 9, 1776)
- We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
- Declaration of Independence (ratified July 4, 1776)
- 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.
- Thomas Paine, The Crisis, no 1 (December 23, 1776)
- Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
And Slav'ry clank her galling chains,
We fear them not, we trust in God,
New England's God forever reigns.- William Billings, "Chester", in The Singing Master's Assistant (1778)
- Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is Americans.
- Thomas Paine, The Crisis, no. 13 (April 1783)
- Much less is it adviseable for a Person to go thither [to America], who has no other Quality to recommend him but his Birth. In Europe it has indeed its Value; but it is a Commodity that cannot be carried to a worse Market than that of America, where people do not inquire concerning a Stranger, What is he? but, What can he do?
- Benjamin Franklin, Information to Those Who Would Remove to America (Passy, 1784)
- 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, to a foreign ambassador (1785), as quoted in Charles F. Adams (ed.), The Works of John Adams (1851), p. 392
- The first man put at the helm will be a good one. No body knows what sort may come afterwards. The Executive will be always increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a Monarchy.
- Benjamin Franklin, at the Constitutional Convention (June 4, 1787), which resulted in the Federal Constitution
- Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
The queen of the world and the child of the skies!
Thy genius commands thee; with rapture behold,
While ages on ages thy splendors unfold.
- Powel: Well, Doctor, what have we got?
Franklin: A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.
Powel: And why not keep it?
Franklin: Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.- Conversation between Benjamin Franklin and Elizabeth Willing Powel at the Constitutional Convention (September 17, 1787)
- We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
- Preamble to the Constitution (September 17, 1787)
- Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
- First Amendment to the Constitution (December 15, 1791), ratified along with nine other articles of the Bill of Rights
- A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
- Second Amendment to the Constitution (December 15, 1791)
- As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character or enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
- Joel Barlow, Treaty of Tripoli (January 3, 1797), art. 11
- Hail, Columbia! happy land!
Hail, ye heroes! heavenborn band!
Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause.- Joseph Hopkinson, "Hail, Columbia" (1798)
19th century
- O! say does that star-spangled Banner yet wave,
O'er the Land of the free and the home of the brave?
- In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue?
- Sydney Smith, "America", in The Edinburgh Review, vol. 33, no. 65 (January 1820), p. 79
- Slavery in this country, I have seen hanging over it like a black cloud for half a century.
- John Adams (1821), as quoted in Joseph J. Ellis, Passionate Sage (York: Norton, 1993), p. 138
- Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
- John Quincy Adams, Address as Secretary of State to the U.S. House of Representatives (July 4, 1821)
- Yet, still, from either beach,
The voice of blood shall reach,
More audible than speech,
We are one!- Washington Allston, "Lines (America and England)", in The Cincinnati Literary Gazette (July 30, 1825), p. 244
- I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.
- George Canning, Address to the British House of Commons (December 12, 1826), in R. Therry (ed.), Speeches of Lord Canning, vol. 6 (London: James Ridgway, 1826), p. 111
- The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed. - And the heavy night hung dark,
The hills and waters o'er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore. - What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine,
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
They sought a faith's pure shrine. - Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found —
Freedom to whorship God.- Felicia Hemans, "The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers", sts. 1, 2, 9, 10
- The League of the Alps, ... and Other Poems (1826), p. 4
- My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,—
Of thee I sing:
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountain side
Let freedom ring.- Samuel F. Smith, "America" (1831)
- We have built no national temples but the Capitol; we consult no common oracle but the Constitution.
- Rufus Choate, The Importance of Illustrating New-England History by a Series of Romances like the Waverley Novels (1833), a lecture delivered at Salem, Massachusetts.
- America! half brother of the world!
With something good and bad of every land.- Philip James Bailey, Festus (1839), sc. "The Surface", l. 340
- I am disappointed. This is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic of my imagination.
- Charles Dickens, Letter to William Macready (February 26, 1844), in Appletons' Journal, vol. 8, no. 43 (January, 1880), p. 74
- A spirit of hostile interference against us... checking the fulfilment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.
- John L. O'Sullivan, on opposition to the Texas annexation, in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, vol. 17 (July–August 1845), p. 5
- O, Columbia, the gem of the ocean,
The home of the brave and the free,
The shrine of each patriot's devotion,
A world offers homage to thee.
- Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Building of the Ship", l. 367, in Poems, new ed. (Boston, 1850), p. 330
- Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.
- Atrributed to Horace Greeley and John B. L. Soule (c. 1850)
- Neither do I acknowledge the right of Plymouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all America: it only crops out here.
- Wendell Phillips, Speech at the dinner of the Pilgrim Society at Plymouth (December 21, 1855)
- Asylum of the oppressed of every nation.
- Down to the Plymouth Rock, that had been to their feet as a doorstep
Into a world unknown,—the corner-stone of a nation!- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), pt. 5, st. 2
- America First
- Populist political slogan, originated from the nativist American Party (Know Nothings) in the 1850s
- We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861)
- The triumph of the Union is dispensable not only to the existence of our country to the well being of mankind.
- Horace Greeley, ""The Prayer of the Twenty Millions", Letter to Abraham Lincoln (August 19, 1862)
- Gigantic daughter of the West,
We drink to thee across the flood, ...
For art not thou of English blood?- Alfred Tennyson, "Hands all Round", in the Examiner (1862); London Times (1880)
- Give it only the fulcrum of Plymouth Rock, an idea will upheave the continent.
- Wendell Phillips, Speech, New York (January 21, 1863)
- Speeches, Lectures, and Letters (Boston: James Redpath, 1863), pp. 221, 539
- Earth's biggest Country's gut her soul
An' risen up Earth's Greatest Nation.- James Russell Lowell, The Biglow Papers, 2nd series (London: Trübner & Co., 1865), no. 7, st. 21
- See The Atlantic (February, 1863), p. 265
- Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
- Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (November 9, 1863), based on the signed "Bliss Copy"
- In God We Trust
- Political slogan adopted by Unionists during the Civil War. The capitalized form first appeared on the two-cent piece in 1864. Established in a 1956 law signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as the official national motto, replacing E pluribus unum, which had been the de facto motto
- When asked what State he hails from,
Our sole reply shall be,
He comes from Appomattox
And its famous apple tree.- Charles G. Halpine (Miles O'Reilly), Verse, quoted in Alfred R. Conkling (ed.), Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, vol. 2 (New York: Charles L. Webster & Co., 1889), p. 596
- Variants: "Charter Song of the Grant Club", in The Grant Songster (New York: Haney & Co., 1867), p. 6
- We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States has been fashion'd from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only — which is a very great mistake.
- Walt Whitman, "The Spanish Element in Our Nationality", Letter to the Philadelphia Press (July 20, 1883), later published in The Complete Prose Works of Walt Whitman (1892), pt. 5
- "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"- Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus" (1883), sestet
- Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.- Walt Whitman, "America", in the New York Herald (February 11, 1888)
- Bring me men to match my mountains,
Bring me men to match my plains,
Men with empires in their purpose,
And new eras in their brains.- Sam Walter Foss, "The Coming American", in Sidney Perley (ed.), The Poets of Essex County, Massachusetts (1889), p. 56
- The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.
- Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893), act 1
- The emblem of the brave and true,
Its folds protect no tyrant crew;
The red and white and starry blue
Is freedom's shield and hope.
- Home from the lonely cities, time's wreck, and the naked woe,
Home through the clean great waters where freemen's pennants blow,
Home to the land men dream of, where all the nations go.- George E. Woodberry, "Homeward Bound", in Wild Eden (1899), p. 45
20th century
- O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
- As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that it be carried down to the individual himself. It demands no jealous barrier of isolation; it knows that such isolation is undesirable and impossible; but it teaches that by all men's strictly minding their own business, a fluid society, freely adapting itself to mutual needs, wherein all the world shall belong to all men, as much as each has need or desire, will result. And when Modern Revolution has thus been carried to the heart of the whole world — if it ever shall be, as I hope it will — then may we hope to see a resurrection of that proud spirit of our fathers which put the simple dignity of Man above the gauds of wealth and class, and held that to be an American was greater than to be a king. In that day there shall be neither kings nor Americans — only Men; over the whole earth, Men.
- Voltairine de Cleyre, "Anarchism & American Traditions", in Mother Earth (January, 1909)
- So it's home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and I long to be
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunshine, and the flag is full of stars.- Henry Van Dyke, "America for Me" (June, 1909), in Poems (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911)
- Yankee, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See Damnyank)
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
- America is a tune. It must be sung together.
- Gerald Stanley Lee, Crowds (1913), bk. 5, pt. 3, ch. 12
- The North! the South! the West! the East!
No one the most and none the least,
But each with its own heart and mind,
Each of its own distinctive kind,
Yet each a part and none the whole,
But all together form one soul;
That soul Our Country at its best,
No North, no South, no East, no West,
No yours, no mine, but always Ours,
Merged in one Power our lesser powers,
For no one's favor, great or small,
But all for Each and each for All.- Edmund Vance Cooke, "Each for All", in The Uncommon Commoner (1913), p. 15
- Cf. Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno
- Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.
- Woodrow Wilson, Address, "Unveiling of the Statue to the Memory of Commodore John Barry", Washington, D.C. (May 16, 1914)
- Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another, it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people, and her example, her assistance, her encouragement, has thrilled two continents in this western world with all those fine impulses which have built up human liberty on both sides of the water. She stands, therefore, as an example of independence, as an example of free institutions, and as an example of disinterested international action in the main tenets of justice.
- Woodrow Wilson, Speech, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (January 29, 1916)
- We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency—clear, disinterested thinking and fearless action along the right lines of thought. America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us; and it can consist of all of us only as our spirits are banded together in a common enterprise. That common enterprise is the enterprise of liberty and justice and right. And, therefore, I, for my part, have a great enthusiasm for rendering America spiritually efficient; and that conception lies at the basis of what seems very far removed from it, namely, the plans that have been proposed for the military efficiency of this nation.
- Woodrow Wilson, Speech, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (January 29, 1916)
- Wake up America.
- Augustus P. Gardner, Speech (October 16, 1916), reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), pp. 21–23
- We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house.
- Theodore Roosevelt, Letter to Charles Steward Davison, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Defense Society (January 3, 1919)
- New Lestz Suits that are as American as apple pie.
- Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925), ch. 9
- Failure is not an American habit; and in the strength of great hope we must all shoulder our common load.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Commonwealth Club Address, San Francisco, California (September 23, 1932)
- Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, remarks before the Daughters of the American Revolution, Washington, D.C. (April 21, 1938), The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938 (1941), p. 259. FDR is often quoted as having addressed the DAR as "my fellow immigrants." The above words are believed to be the source.
- We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions, bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities. Whoever seeks to set one race against another seeks to enslave all races. Whoever seeks to set one religion against another, seeks to destroy all religion.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, campaign address, Brooklyn, New York (November 1, 1940); The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940 (1941), p. 53
- As I went walking that ribbon of highway
And I saw above me that endless skyway,
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me. - There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted, said: Private Property,
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing:
This land was made for you and me. - This land is your land ’n this land is my land,
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters:
This land was made for you and me.- Woody Guthrie, "This Land Is Your Land" (April, 1944)
- All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed — selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful — we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture.
- John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952), ch. 51
- To make America the greatest is my goal,
So I beat the Russian, and I beat the Pole,
And for the USA won the Medal of Gold.
Italians said, "You're greater than the Cassius of Old."
We like your name, we like your game,
So make Rome your home if you will.
I said I appreciate kind hospitality,
But the USA is my country still,
'Cause they waiting to welcome me in Louisville.- Muhammad Ali, "How Cassius Took Rome", poem written after winning the light heavyweight gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics, in The Greatest (1975), pt. 2
- In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address (January 20, 1961)
- I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. ... No, I’m not an American. I’m one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy.
- Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet", Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
- If this is a country of freedom, let it be a country of freedom; and if it's not a country of freedom, change it.
- Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet", Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
- There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.
- J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (1966); cf. Yeats, "The Second Coming" (1920)
- 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.
- Richard Nixon, First Inaugural Address (January 20, 1969)
- In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.
- Spiro Agnew, Speech in San Diego (September 11, 1970)
- No power on earth is stronger than the United States of America today. And none will be stronger than the United States of America in the future.
- Richard Nixon, Address to a Joint Session of the Congress on Return From Austria, the Soviet Union, Iran, and Poland (June 1, 1972)
- We've gotten to where we've nearly them'ed ourselves to death. Them and them and them. But this is America. There is no them; there's only us. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.
- Bill Clinton, "A Place Called Hope", Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in New York (July 16, 1992)
21st century
- If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us. If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us.
- George W. Bush, on the presidential campaign trail (2000); reported in David Gregory, "What a difference four years makes", NBC News (September 3, 2004)
- McDonald's (Fuck yeah!) Walmart (Fuck yeah!) The Gap (Fuck yeah!) Baseball (Fuck yeah!) NFL (Fuck yeah!) Rock and roll (Fuck yeah!) The Internet (Fuck yeah!) Slavery (Fuck yeah!) ... Starbucks (Fuck yeah!) Disney World (Fuck yeah!) Porno (Fuck yeah!) Valium (Fuck yeah!) Reeboks (Fuck yeah!) Fake tits (Fuck yeah!) Sushi (Fuck yeah!) Taco Bell (Fuck yeah!) Rodeos (Fuck yeah!) Bed, Bath & Beyond (Fuck yeah, fuck yeah!) Liberty (Fuck yeah!) Wax lips (Fuck yeah!) The Alamo (Fuck yeah!) Band-aids (Fuck yeah!) Las Vegas (Fuck yeah!) Christmas (Fuck yeah!) Immigrants (Fuck yeah!) Popeye (Fuck yeah!) Democrats (Fuck yeah!) Republicans (Fuck yeah, fuck yeah) Sportsmanship... Books...
- Team America: World Police (2004 film), "America, Fuck Yeah!" (theme song)
- Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can.
- Barack Obama, Remarks on New Hampshire Primary Night (January 8, 2008)
- We are America. Second to none. And we own the finish line.
- Joe Biden, Democratic National Convention Speech (July 27, 2016)
- My fellow Americans, we have to be different than this. America has to be better than this, and I believe America is so much better than this.
- Joe Biden, Inaugural Address (January 20, 2021)
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