American Philosophy Quotes

Our American philosophy bids us test every dogma by its results -- the dogma of competition no less than any other.

I went to Concord, a young woman from the backwoods, firm in belief that Emerson was the first of living men. He was the modern Moses who had talked with God apart and could interpret Him to us.

I would say that, unfortunately, the word liberal has been redefined over the last 30 years as if it is a bad thing. But liberalism is a great American philosophy. Being a liberal is one of the best things you can be. I don't think they get a fair shake at all in the conservative mainstream media. So maybe there's some intimidation there.

I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America.

The Chrysler bailout is a basic challenge to the philosophy of America.

I have found here in America a philosophic revolution, philosophically effected.

Until the early 90s, when I was working on a project about the idea of free will in American philosophy. I knew that Lincoln had had something to say about "necessity" and "fatalism," and so I began writing him into the book. In fact, Lincoln took over. I wrote instead 'Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President,' in 1999, and I've splitting rails with Mr. Lincoln ever since. If there's a twelve-step process for this somewhere, I haven't found it yet.

A philosophy is not genuine unless it expires and expresses the life of those who cherish it—the very things that the “hereditary theosophy” of America has singularly failed to do.

My philosophy and my belief was that there was a long way for us to go in improving what we had ever known before, that this country of ours was a country of constant improvement. And so I thought that, well, what my whole approach was based on the promise of a better America.