United States person

“ I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people, whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States, a perfect Union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes. ”

“ I propose to discuss and weigh certain arguments for and against the belief that these eighty million people who constitute the United States of America are destined to develop into a great distinctive nation with a character and culture of its own. ”

“ I learn that the people of the United States have responded to the appeal made to their humane and generous feelings, and that in a manner worthy of so great and powerful a nation—indeed, with a munificence which is almost without parallel. ”

“ We are here citizens of a great, prosperous, magnificent Nation. We have common interests. We are here charged with the common duties to perpetuate, if we can, the prosperity and to maintain the honor of this great Republic. [Applause.] We are here to-night in the enjoyment of free government. We are here in the individual possession of better opportunities of development, of a larger prosperity, and of more individual comfort than are possessed by any other people in the world. ”

“ The United States are therefore, in this respect, the most advanced of all the great nations, in a direction in which all are advancing, and in the United States we see just how much this tendency to personal and political freedom can of itself accomplish. ”

“ Thus, in as comprehensive a manner as possible, is presented the present general situation and its evident tendencies, which bring us to the special consideration of the present condition of the country, which, of all countries, is destined to play the most prominent part in the third order of civilization—the United States of America. ”

“ The foundation of American life is the American home. That which distinguishes us from other nations whose political experience and history have been full of strife and discord is the American home, where one wife sits in single uncrowned glory. [Great applause and cheers.] And now, my countrymen, I beg to assure you that every hope you have for safe running on these lines of free government, on these lines of domestic and social order, I have. For every one of you I have the most cordial greeting. ”

“ A system corresponding with the mild principles of religion and philanthropy toward an unenlightened race of men, whose happiness materially depends on the conduct of the United States, would be as honorable to the national character as conformable to the dictates of sound policy. ”

“ The United States would stand, as no other nation has ever stood in the world—predominant and unselfish—on the highest ideals ever reached in human government. It is a vision as splendid as the Holy Grael. ”

“ In the United States some forty years ago, being a new country, and being a country where everything a man did was in the nature of things, felt to be a first experiment, everybody felt democratic and independent, and as if he were making the laws of the universe just for himself as he went along. ”

“ I say great, though your territorial extent does not place you among large States; great in an origin that gave occasion for an early and resolute expression of that love of liberty which has always pervaded your people; great in a population that has never bowed the knee to the arrogance of power or to the blandishments of wealth, and has, through all the history of the State, maintained the inspiration of its early annals for love of personal independence. ”

“ The American people, in spite of its original defects, in spite of the numerous voids which a hasty growth and a superficial education have left in its ideas, feelings, and customs, is still a great and powerful people. ”

“ The people of the United States, by an instinct which is a peculiar gift of Providence to nations, have comprehended better than even their government has ever yet done, the benignant destinies of the American Continent and their own responsibility in that important matter. ”

“ The United States stood there among the great powers of the earth, strong and respected. The Republic had no foreign foe to fear; its growth in population and wealth, in popular intelligence and progressive civilization, the wonder of the world. There was no visible limit to its development ”

“ The feeling for the public weal, for the improvement of the country and the people at large, for the elevation of humanity, can scarcely be more living and active anywhere than it is here. The people of the United States have a warm heart, and that which gives this people their eternal prerogative of progress is their imitation of Christ;—I say the people of the United States, and I maintain the assertion. ”

“ It would be a pity if we forget the fine things that our ancestors have done. But I also know the magic of America; I also know the great principles which thrill men in the singular body politic to which we belong in the United States. ”

“ But after all has been done by the passage of laws, either Federal or State, to relieve a situation full of solicitude, much more remains to be accomplished by the reinstatement and cultivation of a true American sentiment which recognizes the equality of American citizenship. ”

“ Born on American soil in common with yourselves, deriving our bodies and our minds from its dust, centuries having passed away since our ancestors were torn from the shores of Africa, we, like yourselves, hold ourselves to be in every sense Americans, and that we may, therefore, venture to speak to you in a tone not lower than that which becomes earnest men and American citizens. ”

“ Well, these ideas were part of a larger notion, a vision, if you will, of America herself--an America not only rich in opportunity for the individual but an America, too, of strong families and vibrant neighborhoods; an America whose divergent but harmonizing communities were a reflection of a deeper community of values: the value of work, of family, of religion, and of the love of freedom that God places in each of us and whose defense He has entrusted in a special way to this nation. ”

“ They look to America for instruction and example in the first place, and they next look to England; they look to these countries for everything that is yet undeveloped, of liberty, art, science, education, and improvement. ”

“ America is something in our minds and our habits of outlook which causes us to believe in certain things and to behave in certain ways, and by which, in its totality, we hold ourselves distinguished from others. ”

“ That republic, the United States of America, full of wisdom and of strength, exhibits this phenomenon, and each day their prosperity shows an increase which astonishes other nations. Thus it was reserved for the New World to teach the Old that existence is possible and peaceable under the rule of liberty and equality. ”

“ An immense and most fertile country, a republic where every individual enjoys the most unbounded freedom; such are the advantages which characterise the United States of America, and render them the asylum of the oppressed Europeans. ”

“ The institutions and laws of the United States, in their inception, represented the spirit of a people who were actuated by the highest concepts of human duty, and who sought to establish a political system which should realize the highest ideals. ”

“ On a comprehensive summing up of the processes and present and hitherto condition of the United States, with reference to their future, and the indispensable precedents to it, my point, below all surfaces, and subsoiling them, is, that the bases and prerequisites of a leading nationality are, first, at all hazards, freedom, worldly wealth and products on the largest and most varied scale, common education and intercommunication, and, in general, the passing through of just the stages and crudities we have passed or are passing through in the United States. ”

“ But, as things are to-day, the United States offers, as does no other nation, a limitless opportunity: here a man can go as far as his abilities will carry him. It may be that the foreign-born, as in my own case, must hold on to some of the ideals and ideas of the land of his birth ”

“ Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS—our inferior one varies with the place. ”

“ Today, the lives of these extraordinary Americans and the stories of their indomitable spirits are at the core of our national character. The citizens of the United States will always remember the proud individuals who traded their liberty to preserve our own. ”

“ If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it; what we have to determine now is whether we are big enough, whether we are men enough, whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own. ”

“ There are one or two existing states to which men have looked for some open recognition of their duty to mankind as a whole, and of the necessarily provisional nature of their contemporary constitutions. The United States of America constitute a political system, profoundly different in its origin and in its spirit, from any old-world state ”

“ It was better than that, for it positively added the last touch of colour to my framed and suspended picture. Here, strikingly then, was an American case, and presumably one of the best; one of the best, that is, for some study of the wondrous problem, admiration and amazement of the nations, who yearn over it from far off: the way in which sane Society and pestilent City, in the United States, successfully cohabit, each keeping it up with so little of fear or flutter from the other. ”

“ Whether considered as the servant of the State or of the United States; whether regarded as an advocate or a statesman; whether as a patriot, a legislator, a philosopher, or a friend of liberty and republican government, he is the unquestioned ornament of his country, and unites in himself every title to our respect, our veneration, and gratitude. ”

“ Furthermore, the causes of present prosperity and the industrial advantages of the United States may well demand attention. Throughout every part of this section, also, the importance of good citizenship, in the broadest sense of the word, should receive special emphasis. ”

“ We average Americans know and will remember the clear distinction, the substantial distinction, recognized by the great jurist, between “the people of America” and “the people of the several states,” although they happen to be the same human beings acting in different capacities, as members of different political societies of men. ”

“ The record and constant practice of the United States, as well as her great actual and potential power, fit her above all others to be a leader in the establishment of this principle. The Amer- ican nation possesses a great moral capital in the confidence and trust that the peoples of the world repose in it. ”

“ He will see a people ascending, in the comparatively short period of seventy years, from an attitude in which scarcely any nation thought it worth while to treat with them, to a place among the four principal powers of the globe. ”

“ And when I think of the United States first in an arrangement like this, I am thinking of what is best for the world. ”

“ If these Commentaries shall but inspire in the rising generation a more ardent love of their country, an unquenchable thirst for liberty, and a profound reverence for the constitution and the Union, then they will have accomplished all, that their author ought to desire. Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; ”

“ Wherever, at the head of some new undertaking, you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association. ”

“ I see in America the generality of people living in a style of plenty unknown in monarchical countries, and I see that the principle of its Government—which is that of the Rights of Man—is making rapid progress in the world. ”

“ I think I shall return to America even a better patriot than when I left it. A citizen of the United States travelling on the continent of Europe, finds the contrast between a government of power and a government of opinion forced upon him at every step. ”