Best 112 quotes in «american dream quotes» category

We must redefine the American Dream before we rebuild the infrastructure on which it is based.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.

While the goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God.

What happened to the American Dream? It came true! You're lookin' at it

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

America is big enough to accommodate all their dreams.

We want to rescue the American dream.

America isn't breaking apart at the seams. The American dream isn't dying. Our new racial and ethnic complexion hasn't triggered massive outbreaks of intolerance. Our generations aren't at each other's throats. They're living more interdependently than at any time in recent memory, because that turns out to be a good coping strategy in hard times. Our nation faces huge challenges, no doubt. So do the rest of the world's aging economic powers. If you had to pick a nation with the right stuff to ride out the coming demographic storm, you'd be crazy not to choose America, warts and all.

America has always been the land of dreams because America is a nation of true believers. When the pilgrims landed at Plymouth they prayed. When the Founders wrote the Declaration of Independence, they invoked our creator four times, because in America we don’t worship government, we worship God.

Americans believe that they still live in the land of opportunity - the country that offers the greatest chance of economic advancement. But this is no longer the case.

America was an orchard of peachy dreams behind a gauzed fence and a sign that said ‘No Tresspassing’. This land was his land as much as the next man’s. Like the folk songs he sang, it belonged to everyone, so it belonged to no one. The ungodly sin was the fence, not the crossing of it.

All of these things about America—the independent spirit; freedom and liberty to think, express, and act; the promise of the potential for prosperity—have all been delivered to American citizens by our Founders and Framers, and secured by American soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

And still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom. Struggle for the warmth of The Mecca. Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather, for your name. But do not struggle for the Dreamers. Hope for them. Pray for them, if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all.

As for loving America or not loving America, those aren't your problems, either. Your word for love is survival. Everything else is a story that isn't about you.

As I would learn later on, developed countries will always welcome the Einsteins of this world -- those individuals whose talents are already recognized and deemed to have value. This welcome doesn't usually extend to the poor and uneducated people seeking to enter the country. But the truth, supported by the facts of history and the richness of immigrant contribution to America's distinction in the world, is that the most entrepreneurial, innovative, motivated citizen is the one who has been given an opportunity and wants to repay the debt.

Baada ya Adam na Hawa kutenda dhambi katika bustani ya Edeni, kila mtu anayezaliwa anazaliwa katika dhambi. Kwa hiyo dhambi hutokana na maisha, na maisha hutokana na dhambi.

But in a society with no central motivation, so far adrift and puzzled with itself that its President feels called upon to appoint a Committee on National Goals, a sense of alienation is likely to be very popular--especially among people young enough to shrug off the guilt they're suppose to feel for deviating from a goal or purpose they never understood in the first place. Let the old people wallow in the shame of having failed. The laws they made to preserve a myth are no longer pertinent; the so called American Way begins to seem like a dike made of cheap cement, with many more leaks than the law has fingers to plug. America has been breeding mass anomie since the end of World War II. It is not a political thing, but the sense of new realities, or urgency, anger and sometimes desperation in a society where even the highest authorities seem to be grasping at straws.

But then I realize that everyone is climbing their own mountain here in America. They are tall and mighty and they live in the hearts and everyday lives of the people.

Capitalism is a system of accountability and reciprocity.

America wasn’t its people,” said Murka, stepping toe-to-toe with Herbert. He was a good sight taller than the hulking mass of bulletproof steel standing in front of him. “America was a dream, son. A dream of what we could be. That any person, regardless of their birth, could rise above it all and achieve greatness. It was a dream that even the most lowly of us could stand up, fight, and even die for, if only to protect someone else’s chances for that greatness.

A year earlier my parents had moved us out of the city to a split-level on Long Island, their idea of the American dream, which meant it as now an hour-and-a-half commute via the 7:06 Hicksville to Penn Station every morning. (Dark City Lights)

Born into a world, beautiful. Landing in a terra firma of mud. A mind, innocent. A mind, free. That innocence corrupted. A life, having not taken a thousand breaths, torn asunder by the hardened teeth guiding this nation. Stand? For what?

cross-national studies show that the U.S. poverty rate, which stands persistently above 12 percent, is not only the highest poverty rate of any advanced industrial nation, but is more than twice the average for that group. Pursuing the American Dream, 9, 276

Dunia ni uwanja wa vita wa vita ya dhambi ya vita ya maisha! Kuishi maisha ya kufikirika ni kushinda vita ya maisha ya vita ya dhambi. Vita ya dhambi ya vita ya maisha si vita ya kufikirika! Bila Yesu katika maisha yetu hakuna atakayeishinda.

Forget the American dream...whats your dream? The thing that keeps you up at night...the thing that makes you happy...the thing that keeps your spirit going. Do that thing. Don't label it a hobby or what you do in your spare time type of thing...label that thing you do the thing you love to do. The thing you were born to do. When you stop doing what you love you lose a huge part of yourself. Don't get lost.

Denying the popular vote is un-American and anti-democratic.

FDR rejected Hamilton's focus on the needs of an economic elite in favor of «jefferson's focus on the needs and interst of the common man. Pursuing the American Dream, 6, 175

Gatsby, her yıl önümüzde biraz daha gerileyen o yeşil ışığa, o bel-getirici geleceğe inanıyordu. Kaçırdık o vakit elimizden onu, ama ziyanı yok, yarın daha hızlı koşacak, kollarımızı daha ilerilere uzatacağız... Ve bir sabah, aydınlıklar içinde... O ümitledir ki şimdi sefer etmekteyiz, biz o akıntıya karşı giden tekneler, durmadan geriye, geçmişe çarpılıp atılsak da ne gam...

However, here's a warning you may want to heed about the American dream-read the fine print!

I'd attended a selective liberal arts college, trained at respectable research institutions, and even completed a dissertation for a doctoral degree. In our shared office, I'd tell new hires I was ABD, so they wouldn't feel their own situation was so bleak. If they saw a ten-year veteran adjunct with a PhD, they might lose hope of securing a permanent job. It was the least I could do, as a good American, to remind the young we were an innocent and optimistic country where everyone was entitled to a fulfilling career. To make sure they understood that PhD stood not for "piled higher and deeper" or "Pop has dough," but in fact the degree meant "professional happiness desired," and at the altruistic colleges of democratic America only the angry or sad ones need not apply.

If America is to be strong in the future, Americans must see America as home, not divided by race or region. Build American jobs for the future and come together with compassion to solve problems.

I guess my ideals died the hardest. It’s often that way with the children of immigrants. We need to buy the dream so bad we sometimes can’t wake up.

I have wept for my nation until I am out of tears. Not from a personal depression, but with the deepest grief and sorrow as one might have for a dying loved one who lays helplessly in the hospital. The patient in this case is our nation, America, but she is not so much ill as she is being euthanized...And so, being presently out of tears for the moment, I take up the pen.

I love America for its bourgeois comfort. If I was as heavily in debt as they are, I wouldn't be drinking tea or coffee anywhere. I would be sipping tap water from an old bottle and serving others tea or coffee in a cafe somewhere.

In 2001 New York came under attack, and thousands of people simply evaporated, leaving behind only dust and bits of gold Rolex watches. We were told that we had nothing to worry about, that we should go shopping. I was eager to please my country, for shopping had long been an answer for me, but what I couldn't pay for, I stole. I started to accumulate stuff I felt would make me feel whole: I surrounded myself with symbols of status. I believed the TV commercials with all my heart. I felt that those material things I was being sold defined me.

In a large sense, Main Street is the American origin story. It's an evocation of the American creation tale, and the kick is that the American origin story is a never-ending one, a perpetual tale of creation and re-creation, an eternal now.

In recent years a smaller share of young adults has been employed than at any time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking such trends in 1948. So it's not surprising that this generation of youthful protesters has a different focus for their grievances: the economy, stupid. But notice the targets they've chosen to demonize. It's all about class, not age. It's 1% versus 99%, not young versus old. Occupy Wall Street, not Occupy Leisure World.

In the wake of World War II, most Democrats and liberals claimed that if justice could be done and was not, only evil intent could explain the inaction. Most Republicans and conservatives replied scornfully that the vagabonds were simply calling yet again for an equal share of wealth that others had earned. Most moderates, both Democrats and Republicans, admitted that more justice demanded to be done, but they warned that equality, absent the striving and competition that had always characterized American life, might be an attractive dream, but it was not “the” American Dream. Pursuing the American Dream, 7, 196

In times of war or peace the US will gladly pay a man to fail should his heart be in it, a small shimmering proof of the American dream.

It's because of my grandfather that I became a Young Avenger. But it's hard sometimes, to be a black kid carrying a name like "Patriot". I remember talking to Captain America about before he died, and he explained what Patriotism meant to him... It wasn't about blindly supporting your government. It was about knowing what your country could be, what it should be... And trying to lead it there through your example. And holding it accountable when it failed. I remember he said: "There's noting patriotic about corruption or cover-ups... or defending them. But exposing them, well, that takes a hero.

It was in 1931 that the historian James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “the American dream.” The American dream is not just a yearning for affluence, Adams said, but also for the chance to overcome barriers and social class, to become the best that we can be. Adams acknowledged that the United States didn’t fully live up to that ideal, but he argued that America came closer than anywhere else.

From eating at El Pollo Loco salsa bar to the Golden Globes buffet, I managed to stumble through this journey with the perseverance of an immigrant and the mindset of an American. I learned to thrive on being uncomfortable to pursue what I loved. The English language was uncomfortable, so I studied BET until it became my natural tongue. Doing stand-up was uncomfortable, so I hung out at the Comedy Palace until it became my second home. Auditions were uncomfortable, so I spent six hundred bucks a month on acting classes while I slept in some dude's living room for three hundred bucks until acting became my profession. I never looked at these challenges as barriers; I saw them as opportunities to grow. I'd rather try to pursue my dream knowing that I might fail miserably than to have never tried at all. That is How to American.

If you wait till you're retired to "spend time" with your family...by the time you get there, your kids will be working to wait until it's time to spend time with their family...and their kids will be waiting...

I have a car again! Top of the list, easily. It’s the American dream. The attendant debt is also part of the dream, I suppose. Americans have weird dreams, when you get right down to it.

I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946. We were both war heroes, and both of us had just been elected to Congress.

In Chicago and across the country, whites looking to achieve the American dream could rely on a legitimate credit system backed by the government. Blacks were herded into the sights of unscrupulous lenders who took them for money and for sport.

In many ways it would be an unprecedented plague, a calamity like the one that had befallen the Egyptians in the Old Testament. The only difference between the Egyptians then and the Americans now was that the Egyptians had been cursed by their own wickedness. They had called an abomination upon their land by worshipping idols and enslaving their fellow humans, all so they could live in splendor. They had chosen riches over righteousness, rapaciousness over justice. The Americans had done no such thing.

In much of urban and Western civilization today, with no proper tragic sense of life, we try to believe that it is all upward and onward--and by ourselves. It works for so few, and it cannot serve us well in the long run--because it is not true. It is an inherently win-lose game, and more and more people find themselves on the losing side.

In my heart, I am American, and I believe I have a free will and can take charge of my own destiny.

In the end, one detail is unarguable: There will always be those searching for treasure. Never forget: We are a country founded on legends and myths. We love them, especially legends of treasure. Looking for treasure isn't just part of being an American, it is America.