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United States

country primarily located in North America

"America", "US", "USA", and "United States of America" redirect here. For the landmass comprising North, Central, South America, and the Caribbean, see Americas. For other uses, see America (disambiguation).

⁠The land of the free and the home of the brave —Francis Scott Key

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal union of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the states of Alaska to the northwest and the archipelagic Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also asserts sovereignty over five major island territories and various uninhabited islands. The country has the world's third-largest land area, largest exclusive economic zone, and third-largest population, exceeding 334 million. Its three largest metropolitan areas are New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and its three most populous states are California, Texas, and Florida.

E Pluribus Unum

Quotes

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  • You brave heroic minds
    Worthy your country’s name,
         That honour still pursue;
         Go and subdue!
  •          Pray enter
    You are learnèd Europeans and we worse
    Than ignorant Americans.
  • E pluribus unum
    • From many, one.
    • Traditional motto of the United States of America. First appeared on title page of The Gentleman's Miscellany (January, 1692). Pierre Antoine (Peter Anthony Motteaux) was editor. Dr. Simetiere affixed it to the American National Seal at time of the Revolution. See Howard P. Arnold, Historic Side Lights (1899). Compare: Ex pluribus unum facere; translation: "From many to make one"; St. Augustine, Confessions, bk. 4, 8, 13

18th century

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1750s

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  • Westward the course of empire takes its way;
    The first four acts already past,
    A fifth shall close the drama with the day:
    Time’s noblest offspring is the last.
    • George Berkeley, On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America (1752), st. 6
    • Cf. John Quincy Adams, Oration at Plymouth (1802): "westward the star of empire takes its way"

1760s

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  • Caesar had his Brutus—Charles the First, his Cromwell—and George the Third—("Treason," cried the Speaker)... may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.
  • Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all,—
    By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.
    • John Dickinson, "The Liberty Song" (1768), in The Writings of John Dickinson, vol. 1 (1895), p. 421

1770s

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  • I am not a Virginian, but an American.
    • Patrick Henry, in John Adams, Notes of Debates in the Continental Congress, Philadelphia (6 September 1774): L. H. Butterfield (ed.) Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 2 (1961), p. 125
  • A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
    • Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with America (March 22, 1775); Works, 6 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854–56) [1]
  • Young man, there is America—which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.
    • Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with America (March 22, 1775)
  • I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
    • Patrick Henry, Speech at the Virginia Convention (March 23, 1775), in William Wirt, Patrick Henry (1818), sect. 4, p. 123
  • What a glorious morning is this!
    • Samuel Adams, on hearing gunfire at Lexington (April 19, 1775), as quoted by Edward Everett, An Address, Delivered at Lexington, on the 19th (20th) April, 1835 (1835); this has often been paraphrased as "What a glorious morning for America!"
  • Unhappy it is though to reflect, that a Brother's Sword has been sheathed in a Brother's breast, and that, the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with Blood, or Inhabited by Slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous Man hesitate in his choice?
  • By the waters of Babylon we sit down and weep, when we think of thee, O America!
  • We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery... Our cause is just, our union is perfect.
    • John Dickinson, Declaration of Causes and Necessities, presented to Congress (July 8, 1775), in C. J. Stillè, The Life and Times of John Dickinson (1891), ch. 5
  • The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind... Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America... But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America the law is king... Receive the fugitive and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.
  • We are in the very midst of a Revolution, the most complete, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the History of Nations.
  • I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country.
    • Apocryphal last words of Nathan Hale (September 22, 1776), as recounted by John Montresor
    • Cf. Joseph Addison, Cato (1713), act 4, sc. 4:
      How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue!
      Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
      That we can die but once to serve our country.
  • Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them. A man can distinguish himself between temper and principle, and I am as confident, as I am that God governs the world, that America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign dominion. Wars, without ceasing, will break out till that period arrives, and the continent must in the end be conqueror; for though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.
  • Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
    And Slav'ry clank her galling chains,
    We fear them not, we trust in God,
    New England's God forever reigns.
  • Easy I am so far, that the ill success of the American war has saved us from slavery—in truth, I am content that liberty will exist anywhere, and amongst Englishmen, even cross the Atlantic.
    • Horace Walpole, Letter to Horace Mann (February 25, 1779), in Peter Cunningham (ed.) Letters, vol. 10 (1858), p. 182 [5]
  • We must consult Brother Jonathan.
    • George Washington's apocryphal reference to his secretary and Aide-de-camp, Colonel Jonathan Trumbull; the phrase, Brother Jonathan, later came to mean the American people, collectively: Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. 7 (1905), p. 94

1780s

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  • Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is Americans.
  • America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights and previleges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.
    • George Washington, Letter to the members of the Volunteer Association and other Inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ireland who have lately arrived in the City of New York (December 2, 1783), as quoted in John C. Fitzpatrick (ed.) The Writings of George Washington, vol. 27 (1938), p. 254
  • Much less is it adviseable for a Person to go thither [to America], who has no other Quality to recommend him but his Birth. In Europe it has indeed its Value; but it is a Commodity that cannot be carried to a worse Market than that of America, where people do not inquire concerning a Stranger, What is he? but, What can he do?
  • Neither my father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, great grandfather or great grandmother, nor any other relation that I know of, or care a farthing for, has been in England these one hundred and fifty years; so that you see I have not one drop of blood in my veins but what is American.
    • John Adams, to a foreign ambassador (1785), as quoted in Charles F. Adams (ed.) The Works of John Adams (1851), p. 392
  • The loss of America what can repay?
    New colonies seek for at Botany Bay.
    • John Freeth, "Botany Bay", in The New London Magazine (1786)
  • Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
    The queen of the world and the child of the skies!
    Thy genius commands thee; with rapture behold,
    While ages on ages thy splendors unfold.
    • Timothy Dwight, "Columbia", in The American Museum, vol. 1 (June 1787), p. 566 [7]
  • Powel: Well, Doctor, what have we got?
    Franklin: A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.
    Powel: And why not keep it?
    Franklin: Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.
  • 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.
  • I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my Country can inspire: since there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the œconomy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity: Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.
    • George Washington, First Inaugural Address (April 30, 1789), published in John C. Fitzpatrick (ed.) The Writings of George Washington, vol. 30 (1939), pp. 294-5.

1790s

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  • The establishment of our new government seemed to be the last great experiment for promoting human happiness by a reasonable compact in civil society. It was to be in the first instance, in a considerable degree, a government of accommodation as well as a government of laws. Much was to be done by prudence, much by conciliation, much by firmness. Few, who are not philosophical spectators, can realize the difficult and delicate part, which a man in my situation had to act. All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external happiness of elevated office.
  • 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.
  • A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
  • We have abundant reason to rejoice, that, in this land, the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened age, and in this land of equal liberty, it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining & holding the highest offices that are known in the United States.
  • As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character or enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

19th century

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1810s

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  • Forever float that standard sheet!
    Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
    With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet,
    And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us?
    • Joseph Rodman Drake, "The American Flag", in the New York Evening Post (May 29, 1819); collected in The Culprit Fay and Other Poems (1835), published posthumously by Drake's daughter. Attributed also to Fitz-Greene Halleck

1820s

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  • In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue?
    • Sydney Smith, "America", in The Edinburgh Review, vol. 33, no. 65 (January 1820), p. 79 [12]
  • Slavery in this country, I have seen hanging over it like a black cloud for half a century.
    • John Adams (1821), as quoted in Joseph J. Ellis, Passionate Sage (York: Norton, 1993), p. 138
  • Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
    • John Quincy Adams, Address as Secretary of State to the U.S. House of Representatives (July 4, 1821) [13]
  • Yet, still, from either beach,
    The voice of blood shall reach,
    More audible than speech,
      We are one!
    • Washington Allston, "Lines (America and England)", in The Cincinnati Literary Gazette (July 30, 1825), p. 244 [14]
  • I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.
    • George Canning, Address to the British House of Commons (December 12, 1826), in R. Therry (ed.) Speeches of Lord Canning, vol. 6 (London: James Ridgway, 1826), p. 111 [15]
  • The breaking waves dashed high
    On a stern and rock-bound coast,
    And the woods against a stormy sky
    Their giant branches tossed.
  • And the heavy night hung dark,
    The hills and waters o'er,
    When a band of exiles moored their bark
    On the wild New England shore.
  • What sought they thus afar?
    Bright jewels of the mine,
    The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
    They sought a faith's pure shrine.
  • Ay, call it holy ground,
    The soil where first they trod;
    They have left unstained what there they found —
    Freedom to whorship God.
    • Felicia Hemans, "The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers", sts. 1, 2, 9, 10
    • The League of the Alps, ... and Other Poems (1826), p. 4 [16]

1830s

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  • My country, 'tis of thee,
    Sweet land of liberty,—
    Of thee I sing:
    Land where my fathers died,
    Land of the Pilgrim's pride,
    From every mountain side
    Let freedom ring.
  • We have built no national temples but the Capitol; we consult no common oracle but the Constitution.
    • Rufus Choate, The Importance of Illustrating New-England History by a Series of Romances like the Waverley Novels (1833), a lecture delivered at Salem, Massachusetts.
  • America! half brother of the world!
    With something good and bad of every land.

1840s

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  • In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.
  • Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations... In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others... The people reign in the American political world as the Deity does in the universe. They are the cause and the aim of all things; everything comes from them, and everything is absorbed in them... In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.
    • Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2 (1840), sec. 2, ch. 5
  • I am disappointed. This is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic of my imagination.
  • A spirit of hostile interference against us... checking the fulfilment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.
  • O, Columbia, the gem of the ocean,
       The home of the brave and the free,
    The shrine of each patriot's devotion,
       A world offers homage to thee.
    • Thomas a'Becket, "O, Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean", in The Public School Singing Book (Philadelphia: Leary & Getz, 1848), p. 4 [19]

1850s

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  • Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
    Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
    Humanity with all its fears,
    With all the hopes of future years,
    Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
  • Neither do I acknowledge the right of Plymouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all America: it only crops out here.
    • Wendell Phillips, Speech at the dinner of the Pilgrim Society at Plymouth (December 21, 1855)
  • The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight — I mean the harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words.
  • Asylum of the oppressed of every nation.
    • Phrase used in the Democratic platform of 1856, referring to the U.S. Henry Harrison Smith (ed.) National Conventions of the Democratic and Republican Parties, from 1832 to 1856 (1892), pp. 77, 83, 87, 114 [21]

1860s

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  • I will put in my poems that with you is heroism upon land and sea,
    And I will report all heroism from an American point of view.
  • We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
  • Gigantic daughter of the West,
    We drink to thee across the flood, ...
    For art not thou of English blood?
    • Alfred Tennyson, "Hands all Round", in the Examiner (1862); London Times (1880)
  • Give it only the fulcrum of Plymouth Rock, an idea will upheave the continent.
    • Wendell Phillips, Speech, New York (January 21, 1863)
    • Speeches, Lectures, and Letters (Boston: James Redpath, 1863), pp. 221, 539 [22]
  • Earth's biggest Country's gut her soul
       An' risen up Earth's Greatest Nation.
    • James Russell Lowell, The Biglow Papers, 2nd series (London: Trübner & Co., 1865), no. 7, st. 21 [23]
    • See The Atlantic (February, 1863), p. 265 [24]
 
We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth
  • 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. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
  • For mere vengeance I would do nothing. This nation is too great to look for mere revenge. But for security of the future I would do every thing.
    • James A. Garfield, speech in New York City (April 15, 1865) on the occasion of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, as reported in John Clark Ridpath, The Life and Work of James A. Garfield (1882 memorial edition), p. 194. Several biographers include this speech, but accounts of his remarks that day vary
  • To grant suffrage to the black man in this country is not innovation, but restoration. It is a return to the ancient principles and practices of the fathers.
    • James A. Garfield, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (4 July 1865), in Burke A. Hinsdale (ed.) The Works of James Abraham Garfield, vol. 1 (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1882), p. 88
  • When asked what State he hails from,
       Our sole reply shall be,
    He comes from Appomattox
       And its famous apple tree.
    • Charles G. Halpine (Miles O'Reilly), Verse, quoted in Alfred R. Conkling (ed.) Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, vol. 2 (New York: Charles L. Webster & Co., 1889), p. 596 [25]
    • Variants: "Charter Song of the Grant Club", in The Grant Songster (New York: Haney & Co., 1867), p. 6 [26]
  • As the United States is the freest of all nations, so, too, its people sympathize with all people struggling for liberty and self-government; but while so sympathizing it is due to our honor that we should abstain from enforcing our views upon unwilling nations and from taking an interested part, without invitation.

1870s

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  • The present difficulty, in bringing all parts of the United States to a happy unity and love of country grows out of the prejudice to color. The prejudice is a senseless one, but it exists.
    • Ulysses S. Grant, Memorandum: Reasons why Santo Domingo should be annexed to the United States (1869–1870) [27]
  • America is a country of young men.
  • It appears the Americans have taken umbrage. The deuce they have! Whereabouts is that?
    • In Punch magazine, vol. 63 (1872), p. 189
  • Under existing conditions the negro votes the Republican ticket because he knows his friends are of that party. Many a good citizen votes the opposite, not because he agrees with the great principles of state which separate parties, but because, generally, he is opposed to negro rule. This is a most delusive cry. Treat the negro as a citizen and a voter, as he is and must remain, and soon parties will be divided, not on the color line, but on principle. Then we shall have no complaint of sectional interference.
  • Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar of money shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school. Resolve that neither the state nor nation, or both combined, shall support institutions of learning other than those sufficient to afford every child growing up in the land the opportunity of a good common school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistical tenets. Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and the state forever separate.
    • Ulysses S. Grant, Speech at the Annual Reunion of the Society of the Army of Tennessee (September 29, 1875), Des Moines, Iowa
    • Jeremiah Chaplin (ed.) Words of our Hero, U. S. Gran (Boston: D. Lothrop & Co., [1885]), p. 31 [28]
  • As soon as slavery fired upon the flag it was felt, we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.
  • One might ennumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left. No State, in the European sense of the word, and indeed barely a specific national name. No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages, nor ivied ruins; no cathedrals nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches; no great universities nor public schools—no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow; no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class—no Epsom nor Ascot! ... The natural remark in the almost lurid light of such an indictment, would be that if these things are left out, everything is left out.

1880s

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  • The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. No thoughtful man can fail to appreciate its beneficent effect upon our institutions and people. It has freed us from the perpetual danger of war and dissolution. It has added immensely to the moral and industrial forces of our people. It has liberated the master as well as the slave from a relation which wronged and enfeebled both.
  • We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States has been fashion'd from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only — which is a very great mistake.
    • Walt Whitman, "The Spanish Element in Our Nationality", Letter to the Philadelphia Press (July 20, 1883), later published in The Complete Prose Works of Walt Whitman (1892), pt. 5 [31]
  • "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
    With silent lips. "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-tost to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
  • We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
  • Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
    All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
    Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
    Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
    A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
    Chair’d in the adamant of Time.
    • Walt Whitman, "America", in the New York Herald (February 11, 1888)
  • Bring me men to match my mountains,
       Bring me men to match my plains,
    Men with empires in their purpose,
       And new eras in their brains.
    • Sam Walter Foss, "The Coming American", in Sidney Perley (ed.) The Poets of Essex County, Massachusetts (1889), p. 56 [32]

1890s

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  • The Republican form of Government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature—a type nowhere at present existing.
  • In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever. Fortunately in America Journalism has carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme. As a natural consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt. People are amused by it, or disgusted by it, according to their temperaments. But it is no longer the real force it was. It is not seriously treated.
  • Mrs. Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris.
    Lady Hunstanton: Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to?
    Lord Illingworth: Oh, they go to America.
    • Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893), act 1
  • Great Britain is a republic with a hereditary president, while the United States is a monarchy with an elective king.
    • The Knoxville Journal (February 9, 1896), as quoted in Peter Heys Gries, The Politics of American Foreign Policy (2014), p. 170 [34] [35]
  • Home from the lonely cities, time's wreck, and the naked woe,
    Home through the clean great waters where freemen's pennants blow,
    Home to the land men dream of, where all the nations go.
  • He said it in a moment of excitement, when chasing Americans out of his backyard with brickbats. They used to go there and worship. At bottom he was probably fond of them, but he was always able to conceal it.
    • Mark Twain, "Mark Twain’s Christmas Book", in the New York World (December 10, 1899)

20th century

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1900s

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  • O beautiful for spacious skies,
    For amber waves of grain,
    For purple mountain majesties
    Above the fruited plain!
    America! America!
    God shed His grace on thee,
    And crown thy good with brotherhood
    From sea to shining sea!
  • America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!
  • As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that it be carried down to the individual himself. It demands no jealous barrier of isolation; it knows that such isolation is undesirable and impossible; but it teaches that by all men's strictly minding their own business, a fluid society, freely adapting itself to mutual needs, wherein all the world shall belong to all men, as much as each has need or desire, will result. And when Modern Revolution has thus been carried to the heart of the whole world — if it ever shall be, as I hope it will — then may we hope to see a resurrection of that proud spirit of our fathers which put the simple dignity of Man above the gauds of wealth and class, and held that to be an American was greater than to be a king. In that day there shall be neither kings nor Americans — only Men; over the whole earth, Men.
  • So it's home again, and home again, America for me!
    My heart is turning home again, and I long to be
    In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
    Where the air is full of sunshine, and the flag is full of stars.
    • Henry Van Dyke, "America for Me" (June, 1909), in Poems (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911) [37]
  • America is a mistake; a gigantic mistake, it is true, but none the less a mistake.
    • Sigmund Freud, remark to Ernest Jones (1909), as quoted in The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, vol. 2‎ (1955), p. 60 [38]
    • Also quoted as, "Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake." in Memories of a Psycho-analyst (1959), ch. 9; and as, "America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but I am afraid it is not going to be a success." in Ronald W. Clark, Freud: the Man and his Cause (1980), pt. 3, ch. 12

1910s

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  • America is a tune. It must be sung together.
  • The North! the South! the West! the East!
    No one the most and none the least,
    But each with its own heart and mind,
    Each of its own distinctive kind,
    Yet each a part and none the whole,
    But all together form one soul;
    That soul Our Country at its best,
    No North, no South, no East, no West,
    No yours, no mine, but always Ours,
    Merged in one Power our lesser powers,
    For no one's favor, great or small,
    But all for Each and each for All.
  • I could come back to America (could be carried back on a stretcher) to die—but never, never to live.
    • Henry James, Letter to Alice James (April 1, 1913), in Percy Lubbock (ed.) The Letters of Henry James, vol. 2 (1920), p. 206 [40]
  • 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.
    • Theodore Roosevelt, Speech in New York (October 12, 1915), in Works, Memorial ed., vol. 20 (1925), p. 457
  • Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.
    • Woodrow Wilson, Address, "Unveiling of the Statue to the Memory of Commodore John Barry", Washington, D.C. (May 16, 1914)
  • Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another, it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people, and her example, her assistance, her encouragement, has thrilled two continents in this western world with all those fine impulses which have built up human liberty on both sides of the water. She stands, therefore, as an example of independence, as an example of free institutions, and as an example of disinterested international action in the main tenets of justice.
  • We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency—clear, disinterested thinking and fearless action along the right lines of thought. America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us; and it can consist of all of us only as our spirits are banded together in a common enterprise. That common enterprise is the enterprise of liberty and justice and right. And, therefore, I, for my part, have a great enthusiasm for rendering America spiritually efficient; and that conception lies at the basis of what seems very far removed from it, namely, the plans that have been proposed for the military efficiency of this nation.
  • America can not be an ostrich with its head in the sand.
    • Woodrow Wilson, Speech at Des Moines, Iowa (February 1, 1916), in The New York Times (February 2, 1916), p. 1
  • The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
    • Woodrow Wilson, Speech to Congress (April 2, 1917), in Selected Addresses (1918), p. 195
  • I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people, whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable, established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes. I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.
  • We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house.
    • Theodore Roosevelt, Letter to Charles Steward Davison, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Defense Society (January 3, 1919)
  • Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America, my fellow citizens—I do not say it in disparagement of any other great people—America is the only idealistic Nation in the world.
    • Woodrow Wilson, Speech at Sioux Falls, South Dakota (September 8, 1919), in Messages and Papers (1924), vol. 2, p. 82

1920s

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  • America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration.
    • Warren G. Harding, Speech at Boston (May 14, 1920), in Frederick E. Schortemeier, Rededicating America (1920), ch. 17
  • New Lestz Suits that are as American as apple pie.
    • Advertisement in the Gettysburg Times (June 3, 1924), p. 6, whence the idiom "As American as mom and apple pie" [41]
  • Income Tax has made more Liars out of the American people than Golf.
    • Will Rogers, "Helping the Girls with their Income Taxes", The Illiterate Digest (1924)
  • The chief business of the American people is business.
    • Calvin Coolidge, Speech in Washington, D.C. (January 17, 1925), in The New York Times (January 18, 1925), p. 19
  • In America there are two classes of travel—first class, and with children.
  • Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
  • I, too, sing America.
    I am the darker brother.
    They send me to eat in the kitchen
    When company comes,
    But I laugh,
    And eat well,
    And grow strong.
    Tomorrow,
    I’ll be at the table
    When company comes.
    Nobody’ll dare
    Say to me,
    “Eat in the kitchen,”
    Then.
    Besides,
    They’ll see how beautiful I am
    And be ashamed—
    I, too, am America.
  • “next to of course god america i
    love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh
    say can you see by the dawn’s early my
    country ’tis of centuries come and go
    and are no more what of it we should worry
    in every language even deafanddumb
    thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
    by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
    why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
    iful than these heroic happy dead
    who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
    they did not stop to think they died instead
    then shall the voices of liberty be mute?”
    He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.
  • The American system of rugged individualism.
    • Herbert Hoover, Speech in New York City (October 22, 1928), in New Day (1928) p. 154

1930s

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  • Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
    • Sinclair Lewis, "The American Fear of Literature", Nobel Prize Address (December 12, 1930), in H. Frenz, Literature 1901–67 (1969), p. 285
  • "There won’t be any revolution in America," said Isadore. Nikitin agreed. ‘The people are all too clean. They spend all their time changing their shirts and washing themselves. You can’t feel fierce and revolutionary in a bathroom."
  • I have fallen in love with American names,
    The sharp, gaunt names that never get fat,
    The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
    The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
    Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.
  • I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse.
    I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
    You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
    You may bury my tongue at Champmèdy.
    I shall not be there, I shall rise and pass.
    Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.
  • I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.
    • Franklin D. Roosevelt, Speech to the Democratic Convention in Chicago (July 2, 1932), accepting the presidential nomination; in Time magazine (July 11, 1932)
  • Failure is not an American habit; and in the strength of great hope we must all shoulder our common load.
  • In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.
  • Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
    • Franklin D. Roosevelt, remarks before the Daughters of the American Revolution, Washington, D.C. (April 21, 1938), The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938 (1941), p. 259. FDR is often quoted as having addressed the DAR as "my fellow immigrants." The above words are believed to be the source.
  • God bless America,
    Land that I love,
    Stand beside her and guide her
    Thru the night with a light from above.
    From the mountains to the prairies,
    To the oceans white with foam,
    God bless America,
    My home sweet home.

1940s

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  • Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound! Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman! Yes, it’s Superman! Strange visitor from another planet, who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman! Who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel with his bare hands, and who—disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper—fights a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way!
  • I am American bred,
    I have seen much to hate here—much to forgive,
    But in a world where England is finished and dead,
    I do not wish to live.
  • We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions, bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities. Whoever seeks to set one race against another seeks to enslave all races. Whoever seeks to set one religion against another, seeks to destroy all religion.
    • Franklin D. Roosevelt, campaign address, Brooklyn, New York (November 1, 1940); The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940 (1941), p. 53
  • As I went walking that ribbon of highway
    And I saw above me that endless skyway,
    I saw below me that golden valley:
    This land was made for you and me.
  • There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
    A sign was painted, said: Private Property,
    But on the back side it didn’t say nothing:
    This land was made for you and me.
  • This land is your land ’n this land is my land,
    From California to the New York island,
    From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters:
    This land was made for you and me.
  • Men, all this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost, and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to America.
  • The constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens.
  • All the arts in America are a gigantic racket run by unscrupulous men for unhealthy women.
  • Americans are conceited enough to believe they are the only fools in the world.
    • George Bernard Shaw (d. 1950), quoted in Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw: The Lure of Fantasy (1991)
  • England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
    • Attributed to Shaw [45]

1950s

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  • McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled.
    • Joseph McCarthy, Speech in Wisconsin (1952), in Richard Rovere Senator Joe McCarthy (1973), p. 8
  • Let’s talk sense to the American people. Let’s tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains.
    • Adlai Stevenson II, Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois (July 26, 1952), in Speeches of Adlai Stevenson (1952), p. 20 [46]
  • In America any boy may become President.
    • Adlai Stevenson II, Speech in Indianapolis (September 26, 1952), in Major Campaign Speeches of Adlai E. Stevenson; 1952 (1953), p. 174
  • All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed — selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful — we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture.
  • We are the first victims of American Fascism.
    • Julius Rosenberg, Letter to Emanuel Bloch while awaiting execution (June 19, 1953); in Ethel Rosenberg, Testament of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (1954), p. 187
  • The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.

1960s

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  • To make America the greatest is my goal,
    So I beat the Russian, and I beat the Pole,
    And for the USA won the Medal of Gold.
    Italians said, "You're greater than the Cassius of Old."
    We like your name, we like your game,
    So make Rome your home if you will.
    I said I appreciate kind hospitality,
    But the USA is my country still,
    'Cause they waiting to welcome me in Louisville.
  • In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
    And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
    My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
  • The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.
    • Mary McCarthy, "America the Beautiful", in On the Contrary (1961)
  • We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for a hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law.
    • Lyndon B. Johnson, Speech to Congress (November 27, 1963), in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson 1963–64, vol. 1, p. 9
  • I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. ... No, I’m not an American. I’m one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy.
  • If this is a country of freedom, let it be a country of freedom; and if it's not a country of freedom, change it.
    • Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet", Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
  • In your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
    • Lyndon B. Johnson, Speech at University of Michigan (May 22, 1964), in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson 1963–64, vol. 1, p. 704
  • We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
    • Lyndon B. Johnson, Speech at Akron University (October 21, 1964), in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson 1963–64, vol. 2, p. 1391
  • One out of three hundred and twelve Americans is a bore, for instance, and a healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people’s patience.
    • John Updike, "Confessions of a Wild Bore", in Assorted Prose (1965); cf. Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, "Dullard, n."
  • There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.
  • I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.
    • H. Rap Brown, Speech at Washington, D.C. (July 27, 1967), in The Washington Post (July 28, 1967) [49]
  • Here we are the way politics ought to be in America, the politics of happiness, the politics of purpose and the politics of joy.
    • Hubert Humphrey, Speech in Washington, D.C. (April 27, 1968), in The New York Times (April 28, 1968), p. 66 [50]
  • The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America — the chance to help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil, and onto that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization. If we succeed, generations to come will say of us now living that we mastered our moment, that we helped make the world safe for mankind.

1970s

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  • There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture, and it will change the political structure only as its final act.
  • In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.
  • It is time for the great silent majority of Americans to stand up and be counted.
    • Richard Nixon, Election speech (October, 1970), in The New York Times (October 21, 1970) [53]
  • So we think of Marilyn who was every man’s love affair with America, Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards.
  • The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
    • Henry Kissinger, as quoted in The Washington Post (December 23, 1973); he later joked further on this remark, on 10 March 1975 saying to Turkish Foreign Minister Melih Esenbel in Ankara, Turkey:
      Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, "The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer." [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that. [54] [55]
  • This country needs good farmers, good businessmen, good plumbers, good carpenters.
    • Richard Nixon, Farewell Address at the White House (August 9, 1974), cited in The New York Times (August 10, 1974), p. 4
  • No power on earth is stronger than the United States of America today. And none will be stronger than the United States of America in the future.
    • Richard Nixon, Address to a Joint Session of the Congress on Return From Austria, the Soviet Union, Iran, and Poland (June 1, 1972) [56]

1980s

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1990s

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  • We've gotten to where we've nearly them'ed ourselves to death. Them and them and them. But this is America. There is no them; there's only us. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
    • Bill Clinton, "A Place Called Hope", Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in New York (July 16, 1992) [57]
  • Esmeralda: What is your name?
    Butch: Butch.
    Esmeralda: What does it mean?
    Butch: I'm American, honey. Our names don't mean shit.

21st century

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2000s

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  • If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us. If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us.
  • Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing.
    • Gore Vidal, "The State of the Union", in The Nation (September 13, 2004)
  • McDonald's (Fuck yeah!) Walmart (Fuck yeah!) The Gap (Fuck yeah!) Baseball (Fuck yeah!) NFL (Fuck yeah!) Rock and roll (Fuck yeah!) The Internet (Fuck yeah!) Slavery (Fuck yeah!) ... Starbucks (Fuck yeah!) Disney World (Fuck yeah!) Porno (Fuck yeah!) Valium (Fuck yeah!) Reeboks (Fuck yeah!) Fake tits (Fuck yeah!) Sushi (Fuck yeah!) Taco Bell (Fuck yeah!) Rodeos (Fuck yeah!) Bed, Bath & Beyond (Fuck yeah, fuck yeah!) Liberty (Fuck yeah!) Wax lips (Fuck yeah!) The Alamo (Fuck yeah!) Band-aids (Fuck yeah!) Las Vegas (Fuck yeah!) Christmas (Fuck yeah!) Immigrants (Fuck yeah!) Popeye (Fuck yeah!) Democrats (Fuck yeah!) Republicans (Fuck yeah, fuck yeah) Sportsmanship... Books...

2010s

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  • We are America. Second to none. And we own the finish line.
    • Joe Biden, Democratic National Convention Speech (July 27, 2016) [59]

2020s

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  • My fellow Americans, we have to be different than this. America has to be better than this, and I believe America is so much better than this.

See also

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