John Podhoretz Quotes

The United States of America has been great because it has been free.

What makes America great was a government that was founded to be limited to doing one thing. I really believe the whole purpose of America, the aspirational value - why everybody who wants to come to this country wants to come here - was because we respected the dignity of every living person.

This country was founded upon the principle that we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - those rights are what make America great, and they belong to each and every one of us.

Our nation was not founded because we all looked alike, or prayed alike, or descended from the same family tree. But our founders, in their genius, in this, the oldest constitutional democracy, put forth on this earth the idea that all are created equal; that we all have inalienable rights.

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation - not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago.

The perfection of our union, especially our commitment to equality of opportunity, has been a story of constant striving to live up to our Founding principles. This is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said, 'In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.'

America is truly special because it's founded on an idea. It's the ideological and philosophical equivalent of a formless God, in other words, you know? It's, again, the only great country in the world that it is formed out of words.

The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it's a constitution that's the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it's the most generous nation in the world.

America was not founded to improve health care or housing; it was founded for freedom.

Ultimately, I'm about liberty and I think you have to defend it.

People have lost what this nation was built on. I think our core values have been set aside... I believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

I feel like freedom of speech is one of the great things in this country and the freedom to do what you feel is right.

The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.

We, the people of the United States, we are a great Nation with a great vision.

Ours is the only country deliberately founded on a good idea.

Other countries have been founded by 'accidents of force.' America is a creation of thought.

Only Americans can say, My homeland is freedom.

We are blessed with more liberty than just about any other civilized people in history

America was based on a big promise—a great big one: the Declaration of Independence. When you have to live with that in the house, that’s quite a problem—particularly when you’ve got to make money and get ahead, open world markets, do all the things you have to, raise your children, and so forth. America is stuck with its self-definition put on paper in 1776, and that was just like putting a burr under the metaphysical saddle of America—you see, that saddle’s going to jump now and then and it pricks.

We can only solve our biggest problems if we come together and embrace the freedoms that our Founding Fathers established right here in Philadelphia, which permitted our ancestors to create the great American exceptionalism that all of us now enjoy.

The American dream comes from opportunity. The opportunity comes from our founding principles, our core values that's held together and protected by the Constitution. Those ideas are neither Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, white, or black. Those are American ideologies.

We don't need a new idea; the idea is called America, and it still works.

America is the only nation in the world based on an idea - freedom and self-government - so if we don't understand that idea and what sacrifices were made to win that freedom and keep it for over two centuries, how can we possibly continue to keep it?

America was founded by statesmen who were guided by strong moral and political principles. These principles have allowed this nation to flourish and continually improve itself.

The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual.