American Character Quotes

The importance of this event (the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention) is every day growing in the public mind, and it will, in all probability, produce an happy era in our political existence…. Public events in the United States since the peace have given a cast to the American character, which is by no means its true countenance. Delinquencies of the States in their federal obligations; acts of their legislatures violating public Treaties and private Contracts, and an universal imbecility in the public administrations, it is true, form the great features of our political conduct; but these have resulted rather from constitutional defects, and accidental causes than the natural dispositions of the people.

When we seek to reinstate the self-confidence and business enterprise of our citizens by discrediting an abject dependence upon governmental favor, we strive to stimulate those elements of American character which support the hope of American achievement.

Nixon represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.

Unlike President Obama, President Nixon was a capitalist who did not believe in 'remaking' the very character of America.

America has furnished to the world the character of Washington. And if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind.

The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.

My impression of Americans from the beginning is of the best, and I have never since had cause to alter my mind. They are a kind, sympathetic race of people and naturally proud of their country.

Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves; so long a term will be more dishonorable to the American character than to say nothing about it in the Constitution.

Beyond independence, Americans had no consensus on what being an American meant.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the stereotype of the ugly American - voracious, preachy, mercenary, and bombastically chauvinist - was firmly in place in Europe.

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.

At its core, the United States is grateful, warm-hearted, full of unexpected twists and turns - not a cold and bullying prison - it's a place of infinite jest.

No crisis has proved too great for American ability, ingenuity, and courage.

In speaking to you men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

To watch an American on a beach, or crowding into a subway, or buying a theatre ticket, or sitting at home with his radio on, tells you something about one aspect of the American character: the capacity to withstand a great deal of outside interference, so to speak; a willing acceptance of frenzy which, though it's never self-conscious, amounts to a willingness to let other people have and assert their own lively, and even offensive, character. They are a tough race in this.

America is a land of healthy appetites. It is not in the American character to live in order to eat. Rather, the reverse is true. Many try, but just as Americans don't make good gigolos, nether do they make good gourmets.

The strongest streak in the American character is a fierce pragmatism that mistrust blind ideology of every stripe and insists on finding what really works.

In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature, which marks and distinguishes the whole … Your colonies become suspicious, restive and intractable whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force of shuffle from them by chicane what they think is the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other people of the earth …

I don't want to see trickle down racism. I don't want to see a president of the United States saying things which change the character of the generations of Americans that are following. Presidents have an impact on the nature of our nature. And trickle down racism, trickle down bigotry, and trickle down misogyny, all these extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America.

The entitlement mentality so carefully cultivated by liberal academics, politicians, clergymen, and journalists continues to corrode the self-sufficiency that once defined the American character.

It may be taken for granted that, rash as Americans usually are, when they are prudent, there is good reason for it.

The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.

Don King is as American as apple pie. He is America.

The want of attention to the rights of Indians is a principal source of dishonor to the American character. The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded, are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us, which leaves us no alternative but that of fear to keep them from attacking us. But justice is what we should never lose sight of, and in time it may recover their esteem.

Americans are pragmatic, relatively uncomplicated, hearty and given to broad humor.