Quotes about America

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

Whether the church in America is really "free," I doubt.

It's our job to "keep" the republic called America, and we can hardly keep what we don't even know we have.

Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country.

He understood that the law could not force people to do what was right. In fact, the laws of America didn't try to do this. They provided freedom, and what the citizens did with that freedom was something else altogether. "Thus," Tocqueville writes, "while the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust."

I believe our situation in present-day America is grave, but this book is not meant to be discouraging. In fact, by way of encouragement before we consider what we have forgotten and what we must do, let's first acknowledge that despite our difficulties and considerable failings, much of America's promise has already been fulfilled, and spectacularly so, far beyond what anyone might have imagined.

Years later it occurred to me that I was doing the same thing when I was helping my daughter memorize "Paul Revere's Ride." I was teaching her to love sacrifice and goodness and truth and beauty, and I was teaching her the history of America and therefore teaching her to love America.

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.

Restricting the religious impulses of Americans is precisely like killing free enterprise with too many regulations.

America's experience, like many others, teaches us that fostering entrepreneurship is not just about crafting the right economic policy or developing the best educated curricula. It's about creating an entire climate in which innovation and ideas flourish.

We're a nation of laws, but the good thing about America, is that laws reside in the people and people can change the laws.

It is still possible to have friendly discourse in America, as long as you don't bring up any subject.