William Levy Quotes

It was an honor and privilege to arrive to this country 16 years ago with almost no money in my pocket. A lot has happened since then.

Both of my parents were born into poor families on the island of Cuba. They came to America because it was the only place where people like them could have a chance.

Well, you know, I left Cuba as a kid when I was 6 years old back in 1971.

In Romania, of course, gymnastics is among the most popular sports, and my parents had a dream of escaping the Ceausescu regime and giving their child a better life. So they came to the United States and put me in gymnastics.

My parents, fleeing a repressive regime in the Dominican Republic, were embraced by this country and taught us to love it in return. After my father served proudly in the U.S. Army, they settled in Buffalo, N.Y., and were able to live the American Dream.

America was built by immigrants. Immigrants come here for work - to contribute and get to a better place. That's my story. It's a story of hope.

I really feel that my life story is a continuation of the Great American Dream - the immigrant who comes to this country and is allowed to excel. How many other countries would let me do that?

America's legacy has been crafted by generations of hard-working men and women who moved to the United States from all over the globe to pursue their dreams.

My father left Ireland because he did not want to muck horse manure for the rest of his life, and he wanted to come to New York.

The conventional wisdom is that people come to the United States, and immigration is so great, and they say, 'America, what a great country.' And a lot of that is true.

It's the story of New York. Storefronts change and languages change, but at the end of the day, people come here to find opportunity like my family did.

I am a legal immigrant whose parents went from Russia to China to Chile to finally reach the United States and thereby give me a chance to have a better life. I served six years in the U.S. Army Reserve, went to college, have a successful career and have dedicated my life to being a good citizen.

In grade school I was taught that the United States is a melting pot. People from all over the world come here for freedom and to pursue a better life. They arrive with next to nothing, work incredibly hard, learn a new language and new customs, and in a generation they become an integral part of our amazing nation.

I was born in an enemy country. Only in America can someone who came from that beginning do what I am doing. It would never happen in Germany or Japan.

When I first came to the United States in 1956 I fell in love with things - mainly the vitality and the freedoms.

According to a new survey, 40 percent of adults in Mexico say they would move to the United States if they got a chance. The number would have been higher, but the other 60 percent already live here.

America was and is the immigrant's dream.

I remember, the first time I came to the United States in 1996, I didn't speak a word of English at the beginning. I am very thankful for this country and the opportunity music has given me... My three kids were born here in Miami; they speak Spanish at home, but English with all their friends.

I see with joy the Irish emigrants landing at Boston, at New York, and say to myself, There they go—to school.

The fundamental, longtime American attitude has been to ask not where a person comes from but what are his personal qualities. On this basis men and women migrated from every quarter of the globe. By their hard work and their enormously varied talents they hewed a great nation out of a wilderness. By their dedication to liberty and equality they created a society reflecting man's most cherished ideas.

It is the immigrant hordes who keep this country alive, the waves of them arriving year after year.... Who believes in America more than the people who run down the gangplank and kiss the ground?

My wife came here at age 8 not speaking a word of English and ended up in the president's Cabinet.

I say to people that Los Angeles is a city of America's hope and its promise. It's a city where we come from every corner of the Earth here to make the American dream happen.

My mother made the courageous decision to flee a tyrannized Cuba in the 1950s and bring her children to the United States, where I was born.

I came to the States less to find fortune and fame and more to kind of have a life experience of seeing something new.