AMERICA
The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.
John Adams
The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.
John Adams
America’s future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what he is taught; hence we must watch what we teach, and how we live.
Jane Addams
Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.
Thomas Gold Appleton
Americans are probably more interested in spiritual matters than they have been in any other time in the past forty years.
George Barna, president of the Barna Research Group
America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for one dollar and use it up in two weeks.
John Barrymore
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Bill of Rights
I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.
James Boswell
American secular tradition sneers at Constantine, because he began the process of creating a Christian state.
The American evangelical tradition disdains him, because he established Catholicism as the empire’s official faith (a Catholicism not yet Roman, of course).
Americans speak with relief rather than with regret of being Post-Constantinian.
Harold O.J. Brown
America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.
G.K. Chesterton
Our Founding Fathers believed devoutly that there was a God and that the inalienable rights of man were rooted not in the state, nor the legislature, nor in any other human power – but in God alone.
Tom Clark, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
Bill Clinton
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Constitution of the United States of America, 1787
America seeks no earthly empire built on blood and force.
No ambition, no temptation, lures her to thought of foreign dominions.
The legions which she sends forth are armed, not with the sword, but with the cross.
The higher state to which she seeks the allegiance of all mankind is not of human, but of divine origin.
She cherishes no other purpose save to merit the favor of Almighty God.
Calvin Coolidge
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness… For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
The Declaration of Independence
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, “Ours.”
Vine Deloria, Jr.
Then join in hand, brave Americans all!
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.
John Dickinson
Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert Einstein
I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Our abundant plains and mountains would yield little if it were not for the applied skill and energy of Americans working together as fellow citizens bound up in common destiny.
The achievement of brotherhood is the crowning objective of our society.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present War with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his judgements he hath remembered mercy, having remembered his Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for our sins, with many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion, and regard; reserving many of our Towns from Desolation Threatened, and attempted by the Enemy, and giving us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal Advantages against them, without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly we have been sensible of, if it be the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed, It certainly bespeaks our positive Thankfulness, when our Enemies are in any measure disappointed or destroyed; and fearing the Lord should take notice under so many Intimations of his returning mercy, we should be found an Insensible people, as not standing before Him with Thanksgiving, as well as lading him with our Complaints in the time of pressing Afflictions:
The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favor, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we doubt not those who are sensible of God’s Afflictions, have been as diligent to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend it to the Respective Ministers, Elders and people of this Jurisdiction; Solemnly and seriously to keep the same Beseeching that being persuaded by the mercies of God we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies and souls as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ.
The First Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, June 20, 1676
America is a willingness of the heart.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The best kept secret in America today is that people would rather work hard for something they believe in than live a life of aimless diversion.
John Gardner
The organization of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by a mass media notoriously phony.
Paul Goodman
It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ!
Patrick Henry
The Bible is the rock on which our Republic rests.
Andrew Jackson
Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
Thomas Jefferson
Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeus corpus, these are the principles that guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
Thomas Jefferson
The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America.
Lyndon Baines Johnson
If there is one word that describes our form of society in America, it may be the word – voluntary.
Lyndon Baines Johnson
For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that’s sleeping in the unplowed ground.
Lyndon Baines Johnson
The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Now, I say to you today, my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming
shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed
to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Emma Lazarus
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. … That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving Grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
Abraham Lincoln
Americans never quit.
Douglas MacArthur
In time, the rest of the world will appreciate the demonstration that the American way of life is best. They will then seek for themselves the good life of freedom and prosperity. This will be the greatest impetus toward an end of global conflict. The way to get along with people is to beware of religious dictums and dogma. The ideal is to be a nice person and to live by the Creed of Tolerance. Thus we offend few people. We live and let live. This is the American Way.
Catherine Marshall
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
H.L. Mencken
The big majority of Americans, who are comparatively well off, have developed an ability to have enclaves of people living in the greatest misery without almost noticing them.
Gunnar Myrdal
The gospel cannot be preached with truth and power if it does not challenge the pretensions and pride, not only of individuals, but of nations, cultures, civilizations, economic and political systems. The good fortune of America and its power place it under the most grievous temptations to self-adulation.
Reinhold Niebuhr
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?
Richard M. Nixon
This spot marks the final resting-place of the Pilgrims of the Mayflower.
In weariness and hunger and in cold, fighting the wilderness… they here laid the foundations of a state in which all men for countless ages should have liberty to worship God in their own way.
All ye who pass by and see this stone remember, and dedicate yourselves anew to the resolution that you will not rest until this lofty ideal shall have been realized throughout the earth.
Plymouth Rock Inscription
Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn’t block traffic.
Dan Rather
America has begun a spiritual reawakening. Faith and hope are being restored. Americans are turning back to God. Church attendance is up. Audiences for religious books and broadcasts are growing. And I do believe that he has begun to heal our blessed land.
Ronald Reagan
Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.
Ronald Reagan
The time has come to turn to God and reassert our trust in Him for the healing of America. Our country is in need of and ready for a spiritual renewal.
Ronald Reagan
So we pray to Him now for the vision to see our way clearly – to see the way that leads to a better life for ourselves and for all our fellow men – to the achievement of His will to peace on earth.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea.
He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
Adlai Stevenson
In America, anybody can be president. That’s one of the risks you take.
Adlai Stevenson
I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and in her ample rivers, and it was not there.
I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her fertile fields and boundless forests, and it was not there.
I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there.
I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her public school system and her institutions of learning, and it was not there.
I sought for the genius and greatness of America in her democratic congress and her matchless constitution, and it was not there.
Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.
America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don’t think we emphasize that enough these days. If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State!
Harry S. Truman
Our religious faith gives us the answer to the false beliefs of Communism … I have the feeling that God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose.
Harry S. Truman
This is America. We can do anything here.
Ted Turner
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
Mark Twain
In America, we hurry – which is well; but when the day’s work is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us… we burn up our energies with these excitements, and either die early or drop into a lean and mean old age at a time of life which they call a man’s prime in Europe … What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges!
Mark Twain
America is a land where a citizen will cross the ocean to fight for democracy – and won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.
Bill Vaughan
Do not ever let anyone claim to be a true American patriot if they ever attempt to separate Religion from politics.
George Washington
America has no north, no south, no east, no west. The sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains, the compass just points up and down, and we can laugh now at the absurd notion of there being a north and a south. We are one and undivided.
Sam Watkins
If there is anything in my thoughts or style to commend, the credit is due to my parents for instilling in me an early love of the Scriptures. If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.
Daniel Webster
America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scriptures. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very simple thing to ask of you. I ask of every man and woman in this audience that from this night on they will realize that part of the destiny of America lies in their daily perusal of this great book of revelations. That if they would see America free and pure they will make their own spirits free and pure by this baptism of the Holy Scripture.
Woodrow Wilson
American Presidents,
Quotes of
A