Ben Sasse Quotes

May we Americans all live up to our glorious heritage.

I grew up in San Francisco. And so I'm informed in a certain kind of way about, you know, believing in democracy and believing in America. And I'm a very ardent patriot.

England as a culture has endured so much more than America has as a culture, so it's given them a different perspective.

Today the children of our public schools are taught more of the history, heroes, legends, and sagas of the old world than of the land of their birth while they are furnished with little material on the people and institutions that are truly American.

I believe in the country America used to be.

The business of education has lay[ed] the foundations for nurseries of wise and good men, to adapt our modes of teaching to the peculiar form of our government . . . . He must be taught to love his fellow creatures in every part of the world, but he must cherish with a more intense and peculiar affection the citizens of Pennsylvania and of the United States.

I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.

To be an American is of itself almost a moral condition, an education, and a career.

I'm interested in what it means to be an American. I'm interested in what it means to live in America. I'm interested in the kind of country that we live in and leave our kids. I'm interested in trying to define what that country is.

I love America, and I love to say that my family is American.

I'm as American as apple pie.

I wanted to be what my high-school civics and history teacher thought of as a good American. That automatically involved taking an interest in government.

In a sense I've made the same film over and over again. In all of them I've asked, 'Who are we as Americans?

This awareness instills a fierce desire to protect that heritage and - in doing so - to educate Americans in the meaning and importance of our pivotal documents.

Citizens are not born. They are raised.

Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country; he should lisp the praise of liberty and of those illustrious heroes and statesmen who have wrought a revolution in her favor.

That's what I think is important to remember now and when you hear that slogan, "Make America great again." I think it's important that we remind everybody that America was never great in itself. It's been great in its aspirations.

I believe in the principles that built America, I believe in the Constitution.

Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country.

The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry.

It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.

The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk through America, and in their minds everything on the mall would be American.

You may call me selfish if you will, conservative or reactionary, or use any other harsh adjective you see fit to apply, but an American I was born, an American I have remained all my life.

I never get bored talking about themes dealing with ambition, leadership and what it means to be an American. I love that stuff. I just love it. I've loved it ever since I was on 'The West Wing.'

Increasingly, Americans don't own America.