Ilan Stavans Quotes

As a first generation Jewish American, I have witnessed firsthand Jewish immigrants who have come to this Nation in order to create a better life for themselves, their families, and future generations.

For me, the country where I feel good, where I feel in harmony with the lifestyle and fundamental values, is the United States - more than any other country.

What has made America great have been the opportunities given to everyone in this country. Since our founding, individuals and families have come to America to seek freedom, opportunity and the choice for a better life.

The conventional wisdom is that people come to the United States, and immigration is so great, and they say, 'America, what a great country.' And a lot of that is true.

Most people who came here came for economic reasons or sometimes for religious or political reasons. I didn't have any of this. I came here, I liked it, I stayed. So I'm a pure American - even more than people who are born here - because I did it by choice as an adult.

I came to America with a dream and I made it. The dream became reality. America is built for success.

I was born in Hereford, England, in 1944. We moved when they had an opportunity to get a visa, about 1950. My dad always thought Europe was a bit too small for him. He wanted to see the United States... The typical immigrant story. He wanted a better life for his children, too. He always tried to get the visa, and it didn't come up.

I'm an immigrant, a legal immigrant to the United States. I only became a citizen five years ago. Every day, for seven months, I pinched myself as I was walking in and out of the West Wing, so it's only in America, right? Only in America.

I know what it feels like to be a young family looking for opportunity in the United States.

Ed Koch once said that New York City is where immigrants come to audition for America. That's what happened to my parents; that's what happened to me.

The United States has grown into a remarkable nation specifically because of our independent spirit and free market.

For over two centuries, Americans have grown up in a society that rewards hard work, protects innovation, and allows its citizens to constantly break new barriers. The key element to this success rests on freedom and the ability of individuals to strive toward achieving their dreams and making their children's futures better than their own.

Forty-two years ago, I came to America from communist Cuba so I might have a better way of life, a freer way of life - a more democratic way of life. I wanted to live the American Dream where if you worked hard and put your mind to the task, anything was possible.

I had immigrant grandparents who came to this country and came for religious freedom and loved it, never made any money, Bronx, Brooklyn, but loved America. And they told me every day it's the greatest country in the world.

Of course, preserving the American dream has always meant creating opportunity for the most recently arrived Americans - those who have come here from other parts of the globe to work hard and build a new, better life.

A lot of Broadway has that immigrant narrative of America as a place where you can become something else against all odds.

To me, the fact that the Mexican came North in search of a better life is a tremendous epic that hasn't been written. It's an odyssey that we know nothing about. And they came with a dream for a better life.

My generation of Americans, the scions of daring dreamers, the children of the fearlessly faithful and the offspring of many of history's most audacious actors - we, together, drink deeply from wells of freedom, liberty and opportunity that we did not dig.

My parents were lured to America by the democracy here promised. In our family, freedom was a word to conjure by. Hoping for larger privileges for the growing family of children, they brought them to the New World, the world of many intellectual as well as material advantages.

And you have to remember that I came to America as an immigrant. You know, on a ship, through the Statue of Liberty. And I saw that skyline, not just as a representation of steel and concrete and glass, but as really the substance of the American Dream.

It has given me a global vantage point, being the daughter of immigrants from China, who had nothing when they came here. And now I am leading a company. It speaks to something deep in me, the concept that you don't have to start with anything.

In a sense, all Americans are battle-born. Our ancestors came here for something better.

My parents immigrated to the United States with $10 in their pocket and a belief that the America they had heard about really did exist as the land of opportunity.

My great-grandfather, like many, came to this country in search of the American dream.

It's the story of New York. Storefronts change and languages change, but at the end of the day, people come here to find opportunity like my family did.