American Character Quotes - Page 2

• The fact that so many are willing to accept need-based aid signals a fundamental change in the American character.

  Nicholas Eberstadt

  Character, Needs, Fundamentals

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• The entitlement mentality so carefully cultivated by liberal academics, politicians, clergymen, and journalists continues to corrode the self-sufficiency that once defined the American character.

  Mona Charen

  Character, Self, Entitlement

  Mona Charen (2006). “Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help and the Rest of Us”, Sentinel

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• I think it's a wonderful thing to have African-American characters. Look at life. It's not a white world or a black world; there are all kind of people in it. It's showing growth, and in today's world there are so many outlets.

  Darius McCrary

  Character, Thinking, White

  "The Darius McCrary Interview- The Young and the Restless". Interview with Michael Fairman, michaelfairmansoaps.com. December 22, 2009.

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• In speaking to you men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Life, Country, Character

  Speech to Hamilton Club, Chicago, Ill., 10 Apr. 1899

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• New pressures are causing ever more people to find their main satisfaction in their consumptive role rather than in their productive role. And these pressures are bringing forward such traits as pleasure-mindedness, self-indulgence, materialism, and passivity as conspicuous elements of the American character.

  Vance Packard

  Character, Self, People

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• My ardent desire is, and my aim has been, to comply strictly with all our engagements, foreign and domestic, but to keep the United States free from political connections with every other country; to see that they may be independent of all and under the influence of none.

  George Washington

  Country, Home, Character

  "The real George Washington".

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• There is scarcely an aspect of the American character to which humor is not related, few which in some sense it has not governed. ... It is a lawless element, full of surprises.

  Constance Rourke

  Humor, Character, Elements

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• For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand what there is in the American character...that almost automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them.

  Michael Parenti

  Character, Government, Years

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• One of the most important virtues of the American character is our ability to approach the complexities that life presents us with common sense and decency, .. The considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth. It is time for the president and the Congress to follow that common sense for the good of the country.

  Dick Gephardt

  Country, Fall, Character

  "Top Democrats rip Clinton's defense strategy". www.cnn.com. September 14, 1998.

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• I think Hellblazer is quite unique. In a comic world dominated by American characters (nothing wrong with that per se) Constantine was unashamedly British. A certain kind of miserablist British

  Peter Milligan

  Character, Unique, Thinking

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