Henry James Quotes

I became an American in 2006. It got me thinking about what is my America and what's my perception of America.

My fiction occupies, actually, the very heart of American culture: this eternal question and struggle of what it means to be an American.

So this is America. They must be out of their minds.

What a privilege it is to be an American!

I truly appreciate the special qualities that America and American national myths offer me.

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?

Our flag is the symbol of America. I want you to grasp what America really is. It is more than marks on a map. It is more than buildings and land. America is a living structure of human lives, of all the American lives that ever were and ever will be.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism…. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

We used to have a view that to really be a good Australian, to love Australia, you almost had to cut your links with the country of origin. But I don’t think that was right and it never was right.

America is a country defined by a set of ideas, and when people choose to accept those ideas, they should be able to become Americans, as fully so as any - and perhaps more so than most - regardless of how recently they or their ancestors arrived upon our shores. This is the true American tradition, which as conservatives we must defend.

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.

I am an American, not by accident of birth but by choice. I voted with my feet and became an American because I love this country and think it is exceptional.

I am proud to be an American Citizen.

It's a complicated issue, but I define myself as an American, primarily.

I have grown up in the bright light of America.

I'm constantly saying to myself, 'I'm lucky I was born in the United States.'

If I were to live my life over again, I would be an American. I would steep myself in America, I would know no other land.

To me, you know, from my childhood I always had a fascination for United States.

What makes America special is that people come here, assimilate and become American with all of the rights and responsibilities citizenship bestows.

America is the sum of all our journeys as we search for our national community and our national culture.

I'm so proud of my Chinese ancestry, but I was born and raised in America, and I really believe in American values, our American system, our freedom, our liberties.

There's a sameness and comfort level you get living in a country like America.

I was born in the USA, which many people still find hard to believe.

I became an American on Nov. 4, 2010, at an elegant ceremony in Great Hall of Bullfinch's Faneuil Hall, Boston, beneath a vast painting of Daniel Webster debating the preservation of the Union with Robert Hayne of South Carolina, before the Civil War.

I am very proud to be an American. This country has so much potential, I'd just like to see things better, or whatever, and I think it will be.