American Patriotic Quotations , USA Patriotism Sayings

Note:  Not all these authors are from the U.S.A.; however, the sentiments can be applied to patriotism all around the globe.


I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives.  I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.  ~Abraham Lincoln


America is a tune.  It must be sung together.  ~Gerald Stanley Lee, Crowds


We can't all be Washingtons, but we can all be patriots.  ~Charles F. Browne


What is the essence of America?  Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from."  ~Marilyn vos Savant, in Parade


[P]atriotism... is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.  ~Adlai Stevenson


A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.  ~George William Curtis


When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea.  He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.  ~Adlai Stevenson


Love your country.  Your country is the land where your parents sleep, where is spoken that language in which the chosen of your heart, blushing, whispered the first word of love; it is the home that God has given you that by striving to perfect yourselves therein you may prepare to ascend to him.  ~Giuseppe Mazzini


There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream.  They are right.  It is the American dream.  ~Archibald MacLeish


National honor is national property of the highest value.  ~James Monroe, first inaugural address, 4 March 1817


How often we fail to realize our good fortune in living in a country where happiness is more than a lack of tragedy.  ~Paul Sweeney


May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!  ~Daniel Webster


This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.  ~Elmer Davis


The stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting things that matter for a nation; the great peaks of honour we had forgotten - duty and patriotism, clad in glittering white; the great pinnacle of sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to heaven.  ~David Lloyd George


Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet," Essays, Second Series, 1844


If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace.  ~Hamilton Fish


And I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.
~Lee Greenwood


The cement of this union is the heart-blood of every American.  ~Thomas Jefferson


America is much more than a geographical fact.  It is a political and moral fact - the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human equality.  ~Adlai Stevenson


From every mountain side
Let Freedom ring.
~Samuel F. Smith, "America"


Ours is the only country deliberately founded on a good idea.  ~John Gunther


America is a passionate idea or it is nothing.  America is a human brotherhood or it is chaos.  ~Max Lerner, Actions and Passions, 1949


Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all!
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.
~John Dickinson


If you are ashamed to stand by your colors, you had better seek another flag.  ~Author Unknown


Where liberty dwells, there is my country.  ~Benjamin Franklin


Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!  ~Daniel Webster


If you take advantage of everything America has to offer, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.  ~Geraldine Ferraro


Oh, it's home again and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea
To the blessed land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.
~Henry Van Dyke


Sometimes people call me an idealist.  Well, that is the way I know I am an American.  America is the only idealistic nation in the world.  ~Woodrow Wilson


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This, then, is the state of the union:  free and restless, growing and full of hope.  So it was in the beginning.  So it shall always be, while God is willing, and we are strong enough to keep the faith.  ~Lyndon B. Johnson


We sleep peacefully at night, cradled by the big strong hands of America.  ~Val Saintsbury


America is another name for opportunity.  Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine providence on behalf of the human race.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


I love my freedom.  I love my America.  ~Jessi Lane Adams


This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.  ~Theodore Roosevelt


Of all the supervised conditions for life offered man, those under USA's constitution have proved the best.  Wherefore, be sure when you start modifying, corrupting or abrogating it.  ~Martin H. Fischer


He loves his country best who strives to make it best.  ~Robert G. Ingersoll


It is the love of country that has lighted and that keeps glowing the holy fire of patriotism.  ~J. Horace McFarland


"Our country, right or wrong."  When right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.  ~Carl Schurz


Off with your hat, as the flag goes by!
And let the heart have its say;
you're man enough for a tear in your eye
that you will not wipe away.
~Henry Cuyler Bunner


It is the flag just as much of the man who was naturalized yesterday as of the men whose people have been here many generations.  ~Henry Cabot Lodge


The winds that blow through the wide sky in these mounts, the winds that sweep from Canada to Mexico, from the Pacific to the Atlantic - have always blown on free men.  ~Franklin D. Roosevelt


Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.  ~Woodrow Wilson


Star-spangled happiness
and banner waves of pride.
~Cherishe Archer


My God!  How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!  ~Thomas Jefferson


America, for me, has been the pursuit and catching of happiness.  ~Aurora Raigne


I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.  ~Simone de Beauvoir


There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.  ~William J. Clinton


My favorite thing about the United States?  Lots of Americans, one America.  ~Val Saintsbury


Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance.  It is also owed to justice and to humanity.  Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.  ~James Bryce


Our great modern Republic.  May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose.  ~Ulysses S. Grant


For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.  ~Louis D. Brandeis


Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.  ~Seneca


Territory is but the body of a nation.  The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life.  ~James Garfield


Ev'ry heart beats true
'neath the Red, White and Blue,
~George M. Cohan


We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us..... The old "manifest destiny" idea ought to be modified so that each nation has the manifest destiny to do the best it can - and that without cant, without the assumption of self-righteousness and with a desire to learn to the uttermost from other nations.  ~Francis John McConnell


I believe in America because we have great dreams - and because we have the opportunity to make those dreams come true.  ~Wendell L. Wilkie


To me, being an American means feeling safe.  ~Currielene Armstrong


We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.  ~Robert J. McCracken


It is sweet to serve one's country by deeds, and it is not absurd to serve her by words.  ~Sallust


We need an America with the wisdom of experience.  But we must not let America grow old in spirit.  ~Hubert H. Humphrey


May I never wake up from the American dream.  ~Carrie Latet


A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works.  ~Bill Vaughan


I think there is one higher office than president and I would call that patriot.  ~Gary Hart


My patriotic heart beats red, white, and blue.  ~Author Unknown


Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't.  You cannot shirk this and be a man.  To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.  ~Mark Twain


All we have of freedom, all we use or know - This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
~Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue, 1899


What we need are critical lovers of America - patriots who express their faith in their country by working to improve it.  ~Hubert H. Humphrey


You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.  ~Herman Melville


Our hearts where they rocked our cradle,
Our love where we spent our toil,
And our faith, and our hope, and our honor,
We pledge to our native soil.
God gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all.
~Rudyard Kipling


He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland.  ~Harry Emerson Fosdick


We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights.  ~Felix Frankfurter


Patriotism is easy to understand in America - it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.  ~Calvin Coolidge


We dare not forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution.  ~John F. Kennedy


The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.  ~Woodrow Wilson


Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.  ~Sinclair Lewis

Potential Major League Baseball Strike

An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets.  He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head.  ~Emil Zatopek


Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up.  ~Bob Lemon


Baseball is too much of a sport to be a business and too much of a business to be a sport.  ~Phillip Wrigley


People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball.  I'll tell you what I do.  I stare out the window and wait for spring.  ~Rogers Hornsby


A hot dog at the ball park is better than steak at the Ritz.  ~Humphrey Bogart


You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.  ~Jim Bouton, Ball Four, 1970


You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you, too.  ~Roy Campanella


Wives of ballplayers, when they teach their children their prayers, should instruct them how to say:  "God bless Mommy, God bless Daddy, God bless Babe Ruth.  Babe Ruth has upped Daddy's paycheck by fifteen to forty percent." ~Waite Hoyt


The strongest thing that baseball has going for it today are its yesterdays.  ~Lawrence Ritter


The other sports are just sports.  Baseball is a love.  ~Bryant Gumbel, 1981


I don't love baseball.  I don't love most of today's players.  I don't love the owners.  I do love, however, the baseball that is in the heads of baseball fans.  I love the dreams of glory of 10-year-olds, the reminiscences of 70-year-olds.  The greatest baseball arena is in our heads, what we bring to the games, to the telecasts, to reading newspaper reports.  ~Stan Isaacs, "Diamond-Studded Memories," Newsday, 9 April 1990


To think of playing cricket for hard cash!  Money and gentility would ruin any pastime under the sun.  ~Mary Russell Mitford, 1823


It is all very well to say that a man should play for the pure love of the game.  Perhaps he ought, but to the working man it is impossible.  ~J.J. Bentley


I know we're meant to be these hard-headed, money-obsessed professionals but we're still little boys at heart.  Just ask our wives.  ~Rob Lee, 1998


The difference between the old ballplayer and the new ballplayer is the jersey.  The old ballplayer cared about the name on the front.  The new ballplayer cares about the name on the back.  ~Steve Garvey


When we played, World Series checks meant something.  Now all they do is screw up your taxes.  ~Don Drysdale, 1978


With the money I'm making, I should be playing two positions.  ~Pete Rose, 1977


Fans are the only ones who really care.  There are no free-agent fans.  ~Dick Young


It's like going into a nuclear war with bows and arrows.  ~Joe Kinnear, comparing finances and resources in high-dollar and low-dollar sports teams


I see great things in baseball.  It's our game - the American game.  It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism.  Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set.  Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.  ~Walt Whitman


Baseball is a fun game.  It beats working for a living.  ~Phil Linz


When they start the game, they don't yell, "Work ball."  They say, "Play ball."  ~Willie Stargell, 1981


Back then, my idol was Bugs Bunny, because I saw a cartoon of him playing ball - you know, the one where he plays every position himself with nobody else on the field but him?  Now that I think of it, Bugs is still my idol.  You have to love a ballplayer like that.  ~Nomar Garciaparra


A ball player's got to be kept hungry to become a big-leaguer.  That's why no boy from a rich family ever made the big leagues.  ~Joe DiMaggio, quoted in New York Times, 30 April 1961


Say this much for big league baseball - it is beyond question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America.  ~Bruce Catton