National Exceptionalism Quotes

The erosion of equal opportunity is among the greatest threats to our exceptionalism as a nation. But it also provides us with an exciting and historic opportunity: to help more people than ever achieve the American Dream.

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.

American exceptionalism is the recurring character in the nation's narrative.

The United States of America is a flawed society. As it comprises human beings, it must be flawed. But in terms of the goodness achieved inside its borders and spread elsewhere in the world, it has been the finest country that ever existed. If you were to measure the moral gulf between America and those who despise it, the divide would have to be calculated in light-years.

I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in in Greek exceptionalism.

All nations have present, or past, or future reasons for thinking themselves incomparable.

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires.

I feel like we [americans] are a unique nation in this world, in that we are able to implement great change in our society over a relatively short period of time. What takes centuries in Europe, we accomplish in a generation.

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.

Man has the supreme knack of deceiving himself; the Englishman is supremest among men.

Beyond institutional amnesia, a rejection of causal analysis is the existential rock on which American Exceptionalism sits. The United States unique sense of itself depends on an ambiguous relationship to the past. History is affirmed, since it is America's unprecedented historical success that justifies the exceptionalism.

It's easy to deprecate some of the puffery and jingoism that often go with affirmations of 'American greatness.' It's also easy to confuse greatness with perfection, as if evidence of our shortcomings is proof of our mediocrity.

American patriotism is now jingoism. American Greatness is made fun of. The concept of "Make America Great Again" or American exceptionalism is lampooned. It is impugned. It is attacked. The effort to globalize our society and make us feel, as many of us as possible, that there's nothing special about being an American, that we ought to think of ourselves as citizens of the world, and in that context America is a problem because we have too much, we've done too much, we owe too much, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We Americans are tempted to distinguish ourselves from other current and former inhabitants of this planet by assuming that we are ruled by progress.

America is the greatest nation in the history of the world. There's nothing like America.

Americans don't really think that other places are as real as America.