Amanda Foreman Quotes

Dallas was a place where dreamers like my father were given a chance.

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

My parents were drawn to the idea that there was space and opportunity in Australia. For the meagre sum of £10, you could sail your entire family out to Australia, so that's what my father chose to do.

Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world.

American dreams are strongest in the hearts of those who have seen America only in their dreams.

For our immediate family and relatives, Canada was a land of opportunity.

Come and try me. Forget the past, if it makes you sad. I am the Land of the Second Chance. I am the Land of Beginning Again. I will not ask who your ancestors were. I want You- nothing matters now but just you and me, and we will make good together" This is the invitation of the prairie to the discouraged and weary ones of the old lands, whose dreams have failed, whose plans are gone wrong and were ready to fall out of the race.

When we grew up, Australia was the land of opportunity; it really was.

When I came to America, I dreamed bigger dreams.

When I left Stockton and went to Stanford, I felt I hit the lotto. I did not think I was coming back.

There are new children arriving and trying to reach our lucky country every day, and I hope that we can all work together to help them find their dream, too.

We didn't have shoes until we came over to America.

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

If you really look at it, I have done the 'American Dream' that people have died on boats to come here to live.

My parents came here from Colombia during a time of great instability there. Escaping a dire economic situation at home, they moved to New Jersey, where they had friends and family, seeking a better life, and then moved to Boston after I was born.

Every year, thousands of immigrants, asylum seekers and migrants assume great hardships to find safety in America. They choose our country because they see the United States as a land of justice, as a place of safety, and a beacon of hope.

We sure didn't feel like refugees, but in hindsight, I guess we were - my father and mother left everything behind to come here - to be safe and give their boys a chance to rebuild a life.

You had a flood of immigrants, millions of them, coming to this country. What brought them here? It was the hope for a better life for them and their children. And, in the main, they succeeded. It is hard to find any century in history, in which so large a number of people experience so great an improvement in the conditions of their life, in the opportunities open to them, as in the period of the 19th and early 20th century.

So I went to New York City to be born again. It was and remains easy for most Americans to go somewhere else and start anew. I wasn't like my parents. I didn't have any supposedly sacred piece of land or shoals of friends to leave behind. Nowhere has the number zero been of more philisophical value than in the United States.... and when the [train] plunged into a tunnel under New York City, with it's lining of pipes and wires, I was out of the womb and into the birth canal.

There is here, what is not in the old country. In spite of hard, unfamiliar things, there is here - hope. In the old country, a man can be no more than his father, providing he works hard. If his father was a carpenter, he may be a carpenter. He many not be a teacher or a priest. He may rise - but only to his father's state. In the old country, a man is given to the past. Here he belongs to the future. In this land, he may be what he will, if he has the good heart and the way of working honestly at the right things.

Tomorrow I see change, a chance to build a new. Built on spirit intent of heart, and ideals based on truth.

Everyday begins like a blank chalkboard, on which each one of us can write the poem of our present and our dreams for the future.

Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? ... The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.

A new year was a chance to start over. Maybe even, just maybe, there would be a peace on earth for one entire day.

Today might not be so good. But tomorrow, you got another chance to get it right.