American Family Quotes

• It is that fundamental belief, it is that fundamental belief, I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

  Barack Obama

  Dream, Country, Brother

  2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 27 July 2004, Fleet Center, Boston

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• There is no institution more vital to our Nation's survival than the American family. Here the seeds of personal character are planted, the roots of public virtue first nourished. Through love and instruction, discipline, guidance and example, we learn from our mothers and fathers the values that will shape our private lives and our public citizenship.

  Ronald Reagan

  Mother, Father, Character

  Reagan, Ronald (1982). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1981”, p.445, Best Books on

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• American families only spend 17 minutes a day on average having time together.

  Daniel L. Doctoroff

  Average, Together, Minutes

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• Nothing in our daily life offers more of the comfort of continuity, the generational connection of belonging to a vast and complicated American family, the powerful sense of home, the freedom from time's constraints, and the great gift of accumulated memory than does our National Pastime.

  Ken Burns

  Memories, Powerful, Home

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• Nothing even comes a close second. Hillary Clinton, for instance, talks constantly about her fears that families will be separated, but she's not talking about the American families who have been permanently separated from their loved ones because of a preventable homicide, because of a preventable death, because of murder.

  Donald Trump

  Talking, Murder, Loved Ones

  Donald Trump's immigration speech in Phoenix, Arizona, www.nytimes.com. September 1, 2016.

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• It is long past time to eliminate bigotry in the workplace and to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans. It is time to make clear that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans are first class citizens. They are full and welcome members of our American family and they deserve the same civil rights protections as all other Americans. It is time for us to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Such discrimination is wrong and should not be tolerated.

  Tom Harkin

  Gay, Bisexual, Past

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• The American family is not simply changing; it is getting weaker. . . . Family decline drives some of our most urgent social problems. . . . The heart of the family problem lies in the steady breakup of the two-parent home.

  David Popenoe

  Breakup, Lying, Home

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• In comparative terms, there's no poverty in America by a long shot. Heritage Foundation political scientist Robert Rector has worked up figures showing that when the official U.S. measure of poverty was developed in 1963, a poor American family had an income twenty-nine times greater than the average per capita income in the rest of the world. An individual American could make more money than 93 percent of the other people on the planet and still be considered poor.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Average, America, Long

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”, p.127, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The very same British and American families who had combined to wreck the Indian textile industry in the promotion of the opium trade [...] combined to make the trade, a valuable source of revenue. In 1864 they joined forces to create causes for war and to promote the terrible War Between the States, also known as the American Civil War.

  John Coleman

  War, Textiles, Wrecks

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• I am emphatically against the privatization of Social Security. It is going to hurt millions of American women, American families and ultimately the whole country

  Barbara Mikulski

  Country, Hurt, Social

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• I don't like the subtle infiltration of 'something for nothing' philosophies into the very hearthstone of the American family. I believe that 'Thou shalt earn the bread by the sweat of thy face' was a benediction and not a penalty. Work is the zest of life; there is joy in its pursuit.

  Branch Rickey

  Philosophy, Believe, Zest

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• Rural American families who depend on firewood to heat their homes will be hit just as hard as those who use oil and natural gas.

  Richard Pombo

  Home, Oil, Use

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• American families, families back home in Minnesota, know only too well that out-of-pocket expenses for health care have been rising at an astonishing rate.

  Jim Ramstad

  Home, Pockets, Rising

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• Welfare has destroyed the African-American family by telling young black women that husbands and fathers are unnecessary and obsolete. … We have incentivized fornication rather than marriage, and it's no wonder we are now awash in the disastrous social consequences of people who rut like rabbits.

  Bryan Fischer

  Husband, Father, People

  "New reality: You are what you tweet" by Jennifer Martinez, www.politico.com. May 05, 2011.

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• I am an eighth Chinese, and I come from a large Chinese-American family in Los Angeles.

  Lisa See

  Chinese, Los Angeles

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• When I began to think about the head of the family, the storyteller, the rise of television which became the new storyteller, the break-up of the American family as an idea and then Avalon came.

  Barry Levinson

  Break Up, Thinking, Ideas

  Interview with Adrian Wootton, www.theguardian.com. September 7, 2000.

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• In the past the intrinsic pleasures of parenthood for most American families were increased by the extrinsic economic return thatchildren brought. Today, parents have children despite their economic cost. This is a major, indeed a revolutionary, change.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Children, Past, Parent

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• The most important difference between these early American families and our own is that early families constituted economic unitsin which all members, from young children on up, played important productive roles within the household. The prosperity of the whole family depended on how well husband, wife, and children could manage and cultivate the land. Children were essential to this family enterprise from age six or so until their twenties, when they left home.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Children, Husband, Home

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Millions of American families are dealing with teenage pregnancy... It is true that some Americans will judge Governor Palin and her family. There's nothing anyone can do about it.

  Bill O'Reilly

  Teenage, Pregnancy, Judging

  "Sarah Palin and the Chaos Zone". "The O'Reilly Factor" with Bill O'Reilly, www.foxnews.com. September 3, 2008.

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• Unfortunately, many talented people in Hollywood find their values and politics do not reflect the content they create, and many movie themes are in direct contrast with over half of todays American families.

  Allen Covert

  People, Hollywood, Half

  "Digital media company Cherry Tree makes patriotic books for kids" by Hollie McKay, www.foxnews.com. March 2, 2012.

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• To one American family out of four, the idea of capitalism as a benign system of comfort , dignity , and personal advance is only a myth , or worse, a bitter mockery.

  Robert Heilbroner

  Ideas, Four, Comfort

  "The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers". Book by Robert L. Heilbroner, Chapter X, The Modern World, p. 28, 1953.

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• That's one of the biggest losses, I think, to African American families, is that people, once they left, they turned away from the South. They didn't look back, and they often didn't tell their children about it. They didn't want to talk about it. It was too painful, what they'd gone through and the caste system of the South, which was Jim Crow.

  Isabel Wilkerson

  Children, Loss, Thinking

  "Journalist Isabel Wilkerson". "Tavis Smiley", www.pbs.org. December 23, 2010.

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• The problem with the American health-care system that it is not working for the American family.

  John F. Kerry

  Care, Problem, Health Care

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Family farmers are small farmers who love the land. They're still not getting enough money for their product and are rapidly losing their battle to stay in business. By helping the American family farmer, we will in turn help ourselves out of the economic hole that we find ourselves in today. It doesn't really matter how we got here; the point is, we have to dig our way out.

  Willie Nelson

  Land, Battle, Matter

  "On the Clean Road Again: Biodiesel and the Future of the Family Farm". Book by Willie Nelson, 2007.

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• There's just so much love that goes into home cooking, and I think it will really help the American family overall. I'm hoping to maybe get a cookbook out one day because I've got some great family recipes.

  Ming-Na Wen

  Home, Thinking, Cooking

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