Quotes on America

Index to Quotes

Quotes on America

...both postive and negative.

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“It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.” H.L. Mencken
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“A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy… While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader… If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.” John Adams
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“Secure supplies of energy are essential to our prosperity and security. The concentration of 65 percent of the world's known oil reserves in the Persian Gulf means we must continue to ensure reliable access to competitively priced oil and a prompt, adequate response to any major oil supply disruption.” From “National Security Strategy of the United States ”, White House publication, March 1990
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“We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait , and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait .” Margaret Tutweiller, US State Department spokeswoman, 24th July 1990 , nine days before Iraq 's invasion of Kuwait
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“President Bush is an intelligent man. He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq . […] I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait .” April Glaspie, US Ambassador to Iraq, in conversation with Saddam Hussein, US State Department transcripts, 25th July 1990, eight days before the invasion
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“Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take ALL of Kuwait .” April Glaspie, interview with The New York Times, seven weeks after the invasion
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“The next time someone tells you America has a two-party system, demand a recount.” Mickey Z, “DebateThis”
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“We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.” George W. Bush UN Speech Sept 2004
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“I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe—I believe what I believe is right.” George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States
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“Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. ‘We have a single system,' he wrote, and ‘in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses.'” Gore Vidal, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
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“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.” John Adams (1735-1826), Founding Father, 2nd US President
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“No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words ‘no' and ‘not' employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.” Edmund A. Opitz
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“To those who scare peace loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America 's enemies and pause to America 's friends.” John Ashcroft
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“The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology.” Michael Parenti, political scientist, author
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“Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can't help but think that before Israel , we had no enemies in the Middle East .” John Sheehan, S.J. (a Jesuit priest)
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Q. “Mr. President, have you approved of covert activity to destabilize the present government of Nicaragua ?”

A. “Well, no, we're supporting them, the - oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm sorry, I was thinking of El Salvador , because of the previous, when you said Nicaragua . Here again, this is something upon which the national security interests, I just - I will not comment.” Ronald Reagan, former US President, Washington press conference, February 13th 1983 , as quoted by John Pilger in “Heroes”
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“Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life, itself, whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it? ... A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.” Daniel Webster (1782-1852), US Senator, Speech in the House of Representatives, January 14, 1814
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“If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them.” Lysander Spooner (1808-1887), political theorist, activist, abolitionist, No Treason, 1867
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“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” James Bovard, 1994, Lost Rights. The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martin's Press: New York, 1994), p. 333
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“It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy. Power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy ... The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States .” Boutros Boutros-Ghali

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