Jonathan Raban Quotes

Every generation in America has faced the same question, do we we want America to be special? Or do we just want America to be another country? The time has come again.

I'm nervous about the prospects of an America that refuses to abide by its best conscience and its best lights and its best angels.

I don't want to be another country. I want to be the United States of America, the greatest country in the world.

The great thing about America is that people take its history and mythologise it.

I think, at the end of the day, we're Americans: that's what we are, and we believe in America.

I'm not ashamed of being American; I'm very proud.

By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand.

In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.

You have this special place - America, you want it to remain special, you better find out why it became special.

What we Americans need to do is respect that incredible blessing that we have as a nation and make sure that we are leading in the best ways possible.

Whenever people in that part of the world asked Patterson about the wonders of America, the possibilities and the hope of America, Patterson would say that it was a good and fine place but all the Americans were running it into the ground and that it would be a far better place if it had no Americans.

All good men are international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. If we are to be international we must be national.

I have never lost faith in America's essential goodness and greatness.

We're Americans, and we have a rendezvous with destiny . . . No people who have ever lived on this earth have fought harder, paid a higher price for freedom, or done more to advance the dignity of man than Americans.

America's exceptionalism, American leadership, the American model, the American values are not [first with Donald Trump] - they're something that end at the border.

I'm proud to be an American, I'll tell you. What a program and what a place and what an experience.

The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, My country, right or wrong. In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it's the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place. Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We all need to rededicate ourselves to making America great and making it a more perfect union.

The danger to America is not in the direction of the failure to maintain its economic position, but in the direction of the failure to maintain its ideals.

America, our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden. But as Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead.

Do what is right, and you'll have no lasting regrets. Do what is right, and put yourself on the side of truth, goodness, and the best of life.

We Americans understand freedom; we have earned it, we have lived for it, and we have died for it. This nation and its people are freedom's models in a searching world. We can be freedom's missionaries in a doubting world. The genius of the American system is that through freedom we have created extraordinary results from plain old ordinary people.

You can't kill America. We're more than a nation. We're a notion. We're an idea. The American Dream. You never heard of the Afghanistani Dream have you. Except by bearded hermetic recluses with a fetish for uneducated women dressed as giant shuttlecocks.