W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“We Americans are free to give our opinions and make our voices heard. We work in a free enterprise economy that, for over 200 years, has lifted countless individuals above the circumstances of their birth to achieve their God-given potential. We have been an exceptional country because, here, people are free to practice their faiths and worship God.”
“We Americans are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they are produced, or what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away.”
“We Americans are living a lifestyle of exhaustion. We don't have time for ourselves, much less for each other and our children.”
“We Americans are lucky to live in a country with a history full of noble ideas, great leaders and awe-inspiring accomplishments. Sadly, many of our elites want no part of it.”
“We Americans are mildly interested, of course, in reading about the discovery of radium by Madame Curie, but what we really yearn to know is the name of the uncommemorated French female who first mixed a sauce bearnaise.”
“We Americans are not about to stop borrowing as long as they give us money for nothing.”
“We Americans are not an inherently more violent people than folks in other countries. We're not inherently more prone to mental health problems. The main difference that sets our nation apart is what makes us so susceptible to so many mass shootings is that we don't do enough, we don't take the basic commonsense actions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. What's different in America is it's easy to get your hands on a gun.”
“We Americans are not God's covenant people. America has, in any event, no biblical guarantee of perpetuity.”
“We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.
How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.”
“We Americans are tempted to distinguish ourselves from other current and former inhabitants of this planet by assuming that we are ruled by progress.”
Source: Paper trail: essays
“We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries.”
“We Americans are the most lavish and showiest and most luxury loving people on the earth; and at our masthead we fly one true and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag the world has ever seen.”
“We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.”
Source: White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war
“We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.”
“We Americans are trained to think big, talk big, act big, love big, admire bigness but then the essential mystery is in the small.”
Source: Off to the Side: A Memoir
“We Americans are world leaders and we must lead by example - particularly in times that require careful deliberation before any precipitous action - lest we fail to walk in the shoes of those we might injure.”
“We [Americans] became a nation of java junkies, wired from dawn to dusk intent on running faster, getting richer, dancing harder, playing longer and getting higher than anybody else.”
Source: The Devil's Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee
“We Americans can be rightly proud of the fact that the right to the free and unfettered exercise of religion is a primary principle in the vision and founding of our country. It defines us as a people, and has uniquely contributed to making this nation great.”
“We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism.”
Source: Emma Goldman
“We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens.”
Source: Emma Goldman
“We Americans commercialize everything. Look at what we did to Christmas. Christmas is Jesus' birthday. Now, I don't know Jesus, but from what I read he was the least materialistic person who ever walked the earth. No bling on Jesus. He kept a low profile and we turned his birthday into the most commercial day of the year. In fact we have a whole Jesus birthday season. And then at the end of it, we have the nerve to have an economist come on TV and say what a horrible Jesus birthday season we had.”
“We Americans entered a new phase in our history - the era of integration - in 1954.”
“We Americans have a chance to become someday a nation in which all racial stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically.”
“We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a protective monastery of aesthetic truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.”
“We Americans have come to feel that it is our mission to make the world free. We believe that we are always the good guys, everywhere-in Vietnam, in Latin America, wherever we go. We believe we are the good guys at home, too. When the Kemer Commission told white Amerca what black America had always known, that prejudice and hatred built the nation's slums, maintain them and profit by them, white America would not believe it. But it is true. Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies of poverty and racism in our own country and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed as hypocrites in the eyes of the world when we talk about making other people free.
(From Voices of Multicultural America)”
“We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know-we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history.”
“We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage and the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism.”
Source: Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century
“We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.”
Source: Benjamin Harrison, 1833-1901: chronology, documents, bibliographical aids
“We Americans know - although others appear to forget - the risk of spreading conflict. We still seek no wider war.”
“We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.”
Source: Dave Barry's guide to life
“We Americans look at the last 300 years of history, and we basically see a world that's getting better and better. The rule of freedom expands. The economy develops. We have risen to become the world's greatest power.”
“We Americans love original ideas. But truly, there are already plenty of good ones out there, ours for the taking. If I were too proud to copy the ideas of others, I likely wouldnt have even a fraction of my current success.”
“We Americans only voted for George Bush to prove to the British that Americans understand irony. Unfortunately, it kinda backfired.”
“We Americans pride ourselves on our freedom to speak, to say what we believe. But of what use is it to speak if only those who already agree with us listen? A first step toward the abolition of war is learning to listen with respect and sympathy.”
Source: Peace Education: How We Come to Love and Hate War
“We Americans really seem to be the only truly non-socialist economy on earth.”
“We Americans sit at the head of the banquet table, as we have done for a century. Our standard of living is luxurious by any measure.”
“We Americans tend to be a prodigal lot. We are as careless with our personal resources as we are with the resources of nature, squandering both as if there were no end to the gifts of earth and sea and sky.”
“We Americans think we are pretty good! We want to build a house, we cut down some trees. We want to build a fire, we dig a little coal. But when we run out of all these things, then we will find out just how good we really are.”
“We Americans think we enjoy self-government. We have all the trappings of self-government, like elections. But in reality, we have gradually lost many of our rights to govern ourselves. We have the form of self-government, but only some of the substance. We are, in a sense, a nation run by a handful of judges who often enforce, not the law, but their personal opinions.”
“We Americans understand freedom; we have earned it, we have lived for it, and we have died for it. This nation and its people are freedom's models in a searching world. We can be freedom's missionaries in a doubting world. The genius of the American system is that through freedom we have created extraordinary results from plain old ordinary people.”
“We Americans want peace, and it is now evident that we must be prepared to demand it. For other peoples have wanted peace, and the peace they received was the peace of death.”
“We Americans worship the almighty dollar! Well, it is a worthier god than Heredity Privilege.”
Source: Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals, Volume III: (1883-1891)
“We Americans write our own history. And the chapters of which we're proudest are the ones where we had the courage to change. Time and again, Americans have seen the need for change, and have taken the initiative to bring that change to life.”
“We Americans, in most states at least, have not yet experienced a bear-less, eagle-less, cat- less, wolf-less woods. Germany strove for maximum yields of both timber and game and got neither.”
“We Americans, or half of Americans, think health care is a commodity. Other countries view health care as a social service that should be collectively financed and available to everyone on equal terms. My wife and I just interviewed the German minister of health, and it was an exhilarating experience, because it was a totally different language. It was obviously important that everyone should have the same deal in health care.”
“We Americans, we're a simple people . . . but piss us off, and we'll bomb your cities.”
“We Americans, with our terrific emphasis on youth, action, and material success, certainly tend to belittle the afternoon of life and even to pretend it never comes. We push the clock back and try to prolong the morning, over-reaching and over-straining ourselves in the unnatural effort. ... In our breathless attempts we often miss the flowering that waits for afternoon.”
“We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world.”
“We Americans... like change. It is at once our weakness and our strength.”
Source: The Razor's Edge
“We amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes.”
Source: THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER (Literary Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel