Great American Quotes

I want to send a very clear message to the men and women who are wearing - or who have worn - our country's uniform and to their spouses: when you have finished your service to our nation, you've got 2,000 great American companies ready and waiting to bring you on board

This war did not spring up on our land, this war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came to take our land without a price, and who, in our land, do a great many evil things... This war has come from robbery - from the stealing of our land.

In the great city of San Francisco, where I used to live, at 2 in the morning every other Victorian house has somebody who is writing the great American novel. And the city is not loaded with James Joyces or Virginia Woolfs. But entrepreneurship is about distorted views of reality.

I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.

There’s nothing more embarrassing than a person who tries to guess what the great American public would like, makes a compromise for the first time, and falls flat on his face… I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on someone else’s. That’s a difficult statement to live up to, but then I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.

If you destroyed the underpinnings of this great American sport, you are a hated, ugly, detestable person.

I do the meatball recipe a lot. I think the army stew probably too. It's the most useful dish because it was born out of necessity and poverty and any idiot can make it in 20 minutes on a hot plate. It's cheap and uses readily available commercial ingredients. And it's delicious. It should be the great American dish - perfect late-night stoner dorm food for college kids on a budget.

[Dean Martin ] had this really wonderful rich, authentic, distinct vocal style. His humour in movies [and] the self-deprecation and the coolness he had could overshadow what a marvellous vocalist in the Great American Songbook he is.

[T]he great American statesman devotes his energy, ability, and wisdom to conforming himself and this people to the moral principles that gave this nation birth, are older than anything else in the country's soul, and yet retain the power to make us young again with the vigor of virtue and the zeal for justice.

Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!

I have to say I owe my career to the master composers of the Great American Songbook who have written such high-quality songs - the best popular music ever composed.

I've got a collection of songs that I've had, I keep adding to and they're all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I've done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect.

My childhood was epitomized by my parents who were uneducated but had a doctorate in love. My dad pressed coats and through my mom and dad I learned about love, family and respecting people. They never went to high school but they had within them every element that makes a great American. They had pride and a great work ethic and they knew how to do things the right way.

It is not a question of religion, or of creed, or of party; it is a question of declaring and maintaining the great American principle of eternal separation between Church and State.

When I went to the University of Iowa in order to be a writer, I thought, This is the worst way to learn how to write. To sit in a room with a bunch of would-be writers, who want to write the Great American Novel, every one of them, and you read their stories and they read yours, and you're not living a life. I don't like that. I like learning on the job. The character of my work has definitely evolved from the character of my life.

Mike Stanton is our preeminent aficionado and raconteur of Rhode Island’s flamboyantly criminal political follies, and The Prince of Providence is the chronicle of a great American rogue, Mayor Buddy Cianci—a paragon of charisma and corruption.

I'm playing the Great American Songbook - all the blue-sky, puffy-cloud classics. Music that's been missing. I want to be one of the people who ushers it back in. Long as I can do that, man, I'm happy.

I wouldn't use the word upset. I think it's very unfair that these really, in many cases professional, in many cases sick, protesters can put cars on a road blocking thousands of great Americans from coming to a speech and nobody says anything about that. But they'll say something about whatever.

Tom Paine was a great American visionary. His book, Common Sense, sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in a population of four or five million. That means it was a best seller for years. People were thoughtful then. Hope is one thing. But you need to have hope with thought.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

When you heard Jimi Hendrix, you knew it was Jimi Hendrix. He introduced himself with his instrument. His attack to a guitar man, was, oh, something else! You think of one of the great American ball players, or one of the great fighters of the world, you know, that's the way he would attack any note on his guitar.

I think people assume that women write about the domestic sphere. Women write about relationships and family. Men do, too, but then it's the Great American Novel.

I don't think theater is dying, and musicals are a great American art form. We've got apple pie, jazz and musical theater.

Well, you know, I do think in the larger span of things, I owe it all to Star Trek, because Star Trek has given me this pop icon status if you will, and one of the gifts have been this megaphone I have which amplifies my voice and I can reach people. And I do think the movement for equality for LGBT Americans is in the same context of all of the great American movements, you know, the basic fundamental ideals of this country of justice and equality.

Jerry Garcia was a great American master and the Grateful Dead are not just a genuine piece of musical history, but also an important part of American history.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself-and possibly teh bogey man.

Be proud to be a decent American rather than a wanker whipping up fear.

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.

I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.

Don't let's ask for the moon.We have the stars.

Ladies and gentlemen, my mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you!

A boy's best friend is his mother.

A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

I enjoy Chicago as one of the great American cities. When I come here and take a taxi from the airport, I meet a young man from Somalia. I meet a young man from Eritrea who engages with this nation with a sense of hope and a sense of desire. But we also we know that there are other elements of this nation that are toxic.

The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.

I love a lot of American writers, but I think that for the most part the scope of what's accepted as great American writing is very limited. What we have is good, but it's limited. There's not enough engagement with the world. Our literature's not adventurous enough. The influence of MFA writing tends to make things repetitive. The idea that writing can be taught has changed the whole conversation in the U.S.

Of the people, by the people, for the people.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Patriotism is easy to understand in America. It means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.

These are the times that try men's souls.

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.

My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.

Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.

Neo-Hoodoo is the 8 basic dances of 19th century New Orleans' Place Congo- the Calinda the Bamboula the Chacta the Babouille the Conjaille the Juba the Congo and the VooDoo- modernized into the Philly Dog, the Hully Gully, the Funky Chicken, the Popcorn, the Boogaloo and the dance of great American choreographer Buddy Bradley.