Robert E. Lee Quotes

It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Jamaican-Americans - they feel American. It's a huge success story.

Whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship.

We are all Americans, sir.

I believe that it is of the utmost importance that we all should feel and inculcate among the people and circulate amongst them what I call a sense of compatriotism. We should all feel that we are all nationals of one country, whatever our race, colour, creed, or sect.

We honor the heritage of all who come here, no matter where they come from, because we trust in our country's genius for making us all Americans - one nation under God.

America is a place where we all come together. It is a place of consensus.

Schools exist in America and have always existed to train responsible citizens of the United States of America. If they don't do that, it's very hard to hold us together as a country, because it's shared values that hold us together.

As immigrants, we understand better than most that to be an American is a privilege that conveys not just rights but responsibilities.

We quarrel with no man for being a foreigner, but we recognize the moral right in no class of American citizens to train up their children to be foreigners, and then to claim for them all the rights, franchises, and immunities of American citizens.

Each generation of Americans must define what it means to be an American.

Assimilation is what has made America great.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism…. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

In the eyes of government we are just one race here. It is American.

A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. And the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.

I'm going to fight to bring us all together as Americans.

Whether our ancestors came here on the Mayflower, on slave ships, whether they came to Ellis Island or LAX in Los Angeles, whether they came yesterday or walked this land a thousand years ago our great challenge for the 21st century is to find a way to be One America. We can meet all the other challenges if we can go forward as One America.

To divide along the lines of section or caste or creed is un-American.

And we should be a welcoming nation. Our identity is not based on race or ethnicity, it's based on a set of shared values. That's American citizenship.

Here's an idea: How about just 'Americans?' That has a nice ring to it, if you ask me. Placing undue emphasis on our 'separateness' is a step backward. Bring back the melting pot.

What makes America special is that people come here, assimilate and become American with all of the rights and responsibilities citizenship bestows.

My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.

We hear a lot in this country about family, and 'American Family' just shows us a portrait we haven't seen as much of yet. 'American Family' lets us know that being American isn't about the color of your hair or eyes or skin: it's really a state of mind.

For the state of our union to be strong, we need to place value in Americans.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America - there's the United States of America.

I am many different things, and that is why I am so proud to be American.