Anthony Kennedy Quotes

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.

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

In the United States, nobody needs to remind people of their own role or their own power in creating the future they want to see. Perhaps it is something that is almost written into your cultural DNA: a desire to answer your Founding Fathers' call to create a 'more perfect union.'

Let the grand errand into America never be forgotten.

We hold these truths to be self-evident,” begins the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Who holds these truths? Americans hold these truths. Who are Americans? People who adhere to these truths. National identity and political principle were inseparable.

A popular bumper sticker post-9/11, and pretty faded these days, proclaims drivers of the cars to be 'Proud to be an American.' It really should say 'Lucky to be an American,' for I doubt very much that the drivers had much say in having been born here, and are not old enough to have participated in the drafting of the Constitution.

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.

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.

I am proud to be an American Citizen.

You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

Our Founding Fathers would be proud of all that America has achieved, and will continue to achieve, in the coming years.

Men of Virginia, countrymen of Washington, of Patrick Henry, of Jefferson, and of Madison, will ye be true to your constitutional faith?

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

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

Unlike other peoples the United States found their origin in a deliberate act of corporate self-assertion, and ever since the Revolution every little American has been taught to associate himself personally with this creative act.

Join America taught English, an understanding of the U.S. Constitution, that the Bill of Rights is the ultimate insurance policy for a citizen, and that being a citizen is not an entitlement. And we also taught a bit of capitalism.

America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal - to discover and maintain liberty among men.

I was called upon to fulfill the republican dreams of my forefathers.

We have a great nation to help govern. We who are citizens of this great republic are favored children, yet we are all the time complaining; but that is one of the inalienable privileges of an American to complain about his neighbor and government-always crying for a change. But, with all of its faults, this is the best government for man on the face of the earth

Why do we not celebrate the 4th of July? The Declaration of Independence is just as precious to me today as it was twenty years ago! Has it not the same validity that it had in 1776?

The people of the United States live in a new country, that is, I mean new to western civilization. They came here to get rid of Europe, many of them; some to worship God in their own way and carry on their governments in their own way. They were freed from the long warhabit of Europe.

I just like the United States, and I like being an American.

An unlimited America was the vision for the nation set forth by our Founding Fathers. It is the vision enshrined in those two great charters of freedom: our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Many of America's most intractable problems stem from the fact that we have strayed from that vision - and lost direction.