Melting Pot Quotes

As to other foreigners it is thought better to discourage their settling together in large masses, wherein, as in our German settlements, they preserve for a long time their own languages, habits, and principles of government, and that they should distribute themselves sparsely among the natives for quicker amalgamation.

The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian; I am an American.... All distinctions are thrown down; all America is one mass.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism…. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

The United States government has always been proud of the welcome it has extended to good men of every nation, seeking freedom and homes and bread.

One of the things I most admire about America is they have created a genuine melting pot society, a country of opportunity; you can be of any religion, colour, ethnicity, persuasion and make it to the top of your chosen field. And that's something I admire about America and hope they continue with.

I travel the world, and I'm happy to say that America is still the great melting pot - maybe a chunky stew rather than a melting pot at this point, but you know what I mean.

The most American thing in America

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.

I never think of people's nationality too much. I always look at everybody the same. It's impossible for me to just say one group of people over separate groups of people. Maybe it's because I was raised in New York City which is this melting pot. Everybody was always the same and the whole point of my whole film existence was to say that we're just one race.

I love the diversity of America. I love the plain, normal sense of humor Americans have. It is not wicked, like in some countries. And I also love how new America is.

America is a country of immigrants. It's what makes America unique.

In the American 'melting pot,' identity politics wants to smash that pot - to bring us back to the Dark Ages, when collaboration was sparse.

We are all Americans, sir.

… a polyglot boarding house

America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.

I received a letter just before I left office from a man. I don't know why he chose to write it, but I'm glad he did. He wrote that you can go to live in France, but you can't become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can't become a German, an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American.

No country has been more invigorated by immigrant culture, more rewarded by immigrant labor and immigrant ideas than America.

America gave the world the notion of the melting pot - an alchemical cooking device wherein diverse ethnic and religious groups voluntarily mix together, producing a new, American identity. And while critics may argue that the melting pot is a national myth, it has tenaciously informed the America's collective imagination.

The ultimate point of rest and happiness for the Indians is to let our settlements and theirs meet and blend together, to intermix and become one people, incorporating themselves with us as citizens of the U.S. This is what the natural progress of things will of course bring on, and it will be better to promote than retard it. Surely it will be better for them to be identified with us and preserved in the occupation of their lands, than be exposed to the many casualties which may endanger them while a separate people.

Here [America] individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.

All sects are mixed as are all nations thereby producing religious indifference even of the first generation.

New York is traditional New York, you know what I'm saying? It's the stomping ground of the hustlers and go-getters.

I moved from Kentucky to Miramar, Florida, at about 8. I think I was in second grade. I still had my Southern accent, and down there, you got to experience a melting pot in full fury. All the kids I hung out with were, like, Sicilian kids from Jersey and New York.

The early colonists came over with motives no less colonial than the later. They did not come to be assimilated in an American melting pot. They did not come to adopt the culture of the American Indian. They had not the smallest intention of 'giving themselves without reservation' to the new country. They came to get freedom to live as they wanted to. They came to escape from the stifling air and chaos of the old world; they came to make their fortune in a new land.

We are the only country in the world that has taken people from so many different backgrounds, which is a great achievement by itself, but an even greater achievement is that we have turned all of that variety and diversity into unity.