Hervey Allen Quotes

But it is obvious that our fathers, whose efforts have planted these great and prosperous cities along the once lonely trails of our own broad land, received all the fundamentals of civilization as a heritage from their European ancestors.

The white men in the East are like birds. They are hatching out their eggs every year, and there is not room enough in the East, and they must go elsewhere; and they come out West, as you have seen them coming for the last few years.

Here, we tell the story: why the people came here, what they did when they got here, going back to the Native Americans and coming all the way forward.

There is something inexpressibly sad in the thought of the children who crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and the fathers of Jamestown, New Amsterdam, and Boston, and the infancy of those born in the first years of colonial life in this strange new world.

We were also fortunate enough to engage in our service a Canadian Frenchmen, who had been with the Chayenne Indians on the Black mountains, and last summer descended thence by the Little Missouri.

Westward, ever westward.

The settlement of what is now South Africa was a joint enterprise, but one in which the blacks had precedence over the whites; and there seems to be no logical reason why intruders coming by sea should be any more blameworthy than those arriving by land. The persecuted Bushmen did not distinguish between their black and white oppressors.

What I observe are the proud descendants of some of the most remarkable explorers and settlers who ever lived. We carry the cultural and historical inheritance of ocean navigators of peerless skill and their courageous kin who crossed vast distances before the tribes of Europe had ventured forth from their small part of the earth. Our forebearers populated islands scattered over the world's greatest stretch of water, covering a fifth of the planet's surface. It was one of the most amazing migrations in history, a triumphant testimony to human endurance, fortitude and achievement.

We now discovered the Shores crowded with thousands of People––Men Women & Children––May I may venture to say Tens of Thousands; From the Fort to the Place of Landing altho’ near half a Mile, you could see little else along the Shores-- -in the Streets and on Board every Vessel, but Heads standing as thick as Ears of corn before the Harvest-

The history of America is the history of families moving.

American History is largely the record of the adjustment of a migrating people to their environment.

Free Englishmen had independently settled North America in precisely the same their Saxon ancestors … had possessed themselves of the island of Britain.

At a time when Europeans already had a long history of violent contact with Native people, Lewis and Clark made most of their journey in peace.

Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

I'm from New York. My grandparents were settlers of Long Island City. When they came here, there was no bridge, and they had to hire a boat across the river. They had a farm, and my grandmother had to go once a week to Manhattan to buy provisions - very primitive.

Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt.

America, when it became known to Europeans, was, as it had long been, a scene of wide-spread revolution.

The early American arrived at a land of which he knew nothing.

Once, America's size in the imagination was limitless. After Europeans settled and changed it, working from the coasts inland, its size in the imagination shrank.

Had it not been for the Atlantic Ocean and the virgin wilderness, the United States would never have been the Land of Promise.

One of the strongest and most persistent elements in national development has been that inheritance of political traditions and usages which the new settlers brought with them.

The biggest difference between England and America is that England has history, while America has geography.

When the first settlers landed on American shores, the difficulties in finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical as well as almost unbearable.

We, as Americans, at least - I mean, I love my country - but we're so self-righteous sometimes, in terms of, like, our nationality, our country. But we're people from somewhere else; the true 'Americans' are the original peoples. It's funny, but we're a very territorial species.