Bruce Catton Quotes

Our inexorable destiny is to be a great nation.

Never lose your faith in the American Dream. She's a nation under God, and God has never let a good American down.

I regarded and still regard the proposed annexation of Hawaii as not only opposed to our national policy but as a perversion of our national mission. The mission of our nation is to build up and make a great country out of what we have, instead of annexing islands

[America should be a] nation, coextensive with the North American continent, destined by God and nature to be the most populous and powerful people ever combined under one social compact.

It is, beyond question, the destiny of our race to spread themselves over the continent of North America, and this at no distant day.

The day is not far distant when three Stars and Stripes at three equidistant points will mark our territory: one at the North Pole, another at the Panama Canal, and the third at the South Pole. The whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally.

Providence and Manifest Destiny are synonyms often invoked to support arguments based on wishful thinking.

Knowledge and German destiny must come to power above all in the adherence to tradition, and will do so only when teachers and students alike suspend knowledge as their innermost need, and participate in the destiny of Germany in its most extreme need.

My countrymen, the currents of destiny flow through the hearts of the people. Who will check them ? Who will divert them? Who will stop them?

Annexation of new land for America is injudicious in policy and wicked in fact.

A degree of silence envelops [George] Washington’s actions; he moved slowly; one might say that he felt charged with future liberty, and that he feared to compromise it. It was not his own destiny that inspired this new species of hero: it was that of his country; he did not allow himself to enjoy what did not belong to him; but from that profound humility what glory emerged! Search the woods where Washington’s sword gleamed: what do you find? Tombs? No; a world! Washington has left the United States behind for a monument on the field of battle.

We direct the destinies of a mighty continent. Our resources are unlimited: our means unbounded. If we be true to ourselves, the glory of other nations, in comparison to ours, shall resemble but a tale from the days of chivalry.

I truly believe we can be the greatest nation on Earth.

Why on Earth would the United States ever want to be more like Europe? Correct me if I'm wrong, but we left, did we not? Not only did we leave that older, lesser world behind, but we left skid-marks along the way with an entire continent eating our proverbial dust.

I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I've been challenged by so many people, and I don't frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn't have time either. This country is in big trouble. We don't win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico both in trade and at the border. We lose to everybody... We need strength, we need energy, we need quickness and we need brain in this country to turn it around.

This country needs room to grow and expand. In all my own newspapers I read frightful tales of the shameful atrocities being perpetrated on our Democratic minorities in Maine and Vermont. My patience is almost at an end, and if provoked much further I will place both countries under American protection, even if I have to send in my tourists to start trouble so I'll have to send in a force to restore order.

Our destiny is to become what we think, to have our thoughts become our bodies and our bodies become our thoughts.

You have this special place - America, you want it to remain special, you better find out why it became special.

Manifest destiny was on the march, and it was unfortunate that Mexico stood in the path.

We're Americans, and we have a rendezvous with destiny . . . No people who have ever lived on this earth have fought harder, paid a higher price for freedom, or done more to advance the dignity of man than Americans.

I will work every single day to make sure that America continues to be the greatest nation on earth.

Americans tote guns because they're assertive citizens, not docile subjects of a permanent governing class. They love their military because they think there's something contemptible about Europeans preening and posing as a great power when they can't even stop some nickel'n'dime Balkan genital-severers piling up hundreds of thousands of corpses on their borders.

Men," he began his address to the officers, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it.

American patriotism is now jingoism. American Greatness is made fun of. The concept of "Make America Great Again" or American exceptionalism is lampooned. It is impugned. It is attacked. The effort to globalize our society and make us feel, as many of us as possible, that there's nothing special about being an American, that we ought to think of ourselves as citizens of the world, and in that context America is a problem because we have too much, we've done too much, we owe too much, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.