I fear that we have only awakened a sleeping giant, and his reaction will be terrible.

This country demands that every race measure itself by the American standard.

I think in a country like mine, violence is at the root of all human relations.

America is indeed a revelation, though not quite the one that was planned. Given a clean slate, man, it was hoped, would write the future. Instead, he has written his past.

Uncle Sam has no conscience. They don't know what morals are. They don't know what morals are. They don't try and eliminate an evil because it's evil, or because it's illegal, or because it's immoral; they eliminate it only when it threatens their existence.

Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on the plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American.

I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted.

America is not like a blanket-one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt-many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.

On my visits to America, I discovered that the old Marxist dictum, From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, was probably more in force in America-that holy of holies of capitalism-than in any other country in the world.

In America, with all of its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we don't know yet whether that sun is rising or setting for our country.

When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.

Numerous cities will emerge from the bosom of these immense deserts; our ships will cover the seas, abundance will reign within our walls; and two words only will be seen over our altars and in our tribunals: humanity and liberty.

The making of an American begins at that point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.

Europe has what we [Americans] do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities.

America is a land of creators and rebels.

Americans think of themselves as a huge rescue squad on twenty-four-hour call to any spot on the globe where dispute and conflict may erupt.

Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur of God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new7 world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty.