47 American Inspirational Quotes

In a world where words have the power to move mountains, American history is rich with voices that have inspired generations. From iconic leaders to authors and everyday heroes, these individuals have left an indelible mark on our collective consciousness. Whether you're seeking motivation to overcome life's challenges or simply looking for a spark of positivity, our curated collection of the top 47 American inspirational quotes is sure to uplift your spirits. Dive in and let the timeless wisdom of these remarkable figures resonate with your personal journey.

1. “An American is insubmissive, lonely, self-educated, and polite.” - Thornton Wilder

2. “In the depths of him, he too didn't want to go. But he was a born American, and if anything was on show, he had to see it. That was Life.” - D.H. Lawrence

3. “Most timidities have such secret compensations and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self depreciation.” - Edith Wharton

4. “I have to return some videotapes” - Bret Easton Ellis

5. “Buffett was a billionaire who drove his own car, did his own taxes, and still lived in a home he had bought in 1958 for $31,500. He seemed to answer to a deeply rooted, distinctly American mythology, in which decency and common sense triumphed over cosmopolitan guile, and in which an idealized past held firm against a rootless and too hurriedly changing present.” - Roger Lowenstein

6. “Buffett's uncommon urge to chronicle made him a unique character in American life, not only a great capitalist but the Great Explainer of American capitalism. He taught a generation how to think about business, and he showed that securities were not just tokens like the Monopoly flatiron, and that investing need not be a game of chance. It was also a logical, commonsensical enterprise, like the tangible businesses beneath. He stripped Wall Street of its mystery and rejoined it to Main Street -- a mythical or disappearing place, perhaps, but one that is comprehensible to the ordinary American.” - Roger Lowenstein

7. “I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came.” - Jefferson Davis

8. “The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.” - Jefferson Davis

9. “There is nothing so American as our national parks. The scenery and the wildlife are native. The fundamental idea behind the parks is native. It is, in brief, that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us. The parks stand as the outward symbal of the great human principle.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

10. “Be my secret. Be my joy. Be a miracle to me." From the song MIRACLE TO ME, from the album LIONS, by THE BLACK CROWES.” - The Black Crowes

11. “I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.” - George Bernard Shaw

12. “When you've nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.” - Cormac McCarthy

13. “For most Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.” - Paul Krugman

14. “- If I tell you, will you let met go?- You bet, partner. [...]- You promised!- Nope. I said "you bet." You did ... and you lost.” - Scott Snyder

15. “My mind may be American but my heart is British.” - T. S. Eliot

16. “The American really loves nothing but his automobile: not his wife his child nor his country nor even his bank-account first (in fact he doesn't really love that bank-account nearly as much as foreigners like to think because he will spend almost any or all of it for almost anything provided it is valueless enough) but his motor-car. Because the automobile has become our national sex symbol. We cannot really enjoy anything unless we can go up an alley for it. Yet our whole background and raising and training forbids the sub rosa and surreptitious. So we have to divorce our wife today in order to remove from our mistress the odium of mistress in order to divorce our wife tomorrow in order to remove from our mistress and so on. As a result of which the American woman has become cold and and undersexed; she has projected her libido on to the automobile not only because its glitter and gadgets and mobility pander to her vanity and incapacity (because of the dress decreed upon her by the national retailers association) to walk but because it will not maul her and tousle her, get her all sweaty and disarranged. So in order to capture and master anything at all of her anymore the American man has got to make that car his own. Which is why let him live in a rented rathole though he must he will not only own one but renew it each year in pristine virginity, lending it to no one, letting no other hand ever know the last secret forever chaste forever wanton intimacy of its pedals and levers, having nowhere to go in it himself and even if he did he would not go where scratch or blemish might deface it, spending all Sunday morning washing and polishing and waxing it because in doing that he is caressing the body of the woman who has long since now denied him her bed.” - William Faulkner

17. “Much of our food system depends on our not knowing much about it, beyond the price disclosed by the checkout scanner; cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. And it's a short way from not knowing who's at the other end of your food chain to not caring–to the carelessness of both producers and consumers that characterizes our economy today. Of course, the global economy couldn't very well function without this wall of ignorance and the indifference it breeds. This is why the American food industry and its international counterparts fight to keep their products from telling even the simplest stories–"dolphin safe," "humanely slaughtered," etc.–about how they were produced. The more knowledge people have about the way their food is produced, the more likely it is that their values–and not just "value"–will inform their purchasing decisions.” - Michael Pollan

18. “But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their hand-holding on the street and lying on top of each other on the Cambridge Common, prefer their privacy.” - Jhumpa Lahiri

19. “After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro... two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.” - W.E.B. DuBois

20. “In America, we believe that our happiness depends on getting breaks, even though being American is already the biggest break we will ever get.” - Veronique Vienne

21. “Your life can be different, Young Ju. Study and be strong. In America, women have choices.” - An Na

22. “Finally, the president added, 'The American people are idealists, but they also want their leaders to be realistic...” - Bob Woodward

23. “It's certainly not too late to change to the winning side. But you know, you also have the freedom to stay just where you are. That's what it means to be an American. That's the miracle of America. Freedom to believe means the freedom to believe the wrong thing, after all. Just as freedom of speech gives you the right to stay silent.” - Neil Gaiman

24. “Americans like to make money; Canadians like to audit it. I know no other country where accountants have a higher social and moral status.” - Northrop Frye

25. “I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. This was the bone season for me and I needed a vacation.” - Bret Easton Ellis

26. “The seals stupidly dive off rocks into swirling black water, barking mindlessly. The zookeepers feed them dead fish. A crowd gathers around the tank, mostly adults, a few accompanied by children. On the seals' tank a plaque warns: COINS CAN KILL——IF SWALLOWED, COINS CAN LODGE IN AN ANIMAL'S STOMACH AND CAUSE ULCERS, INFECTIONS AND DEATH. DO NOT THROW COINS IN THE POOL. So what do I do? Toss a handful of change into the tank when none of the zookeepers are watching. It's not the seals I hate——it's the audience's enjoyment of them that bothers me.” - Bret Easton Ellis

27. “Despite a few exceptions, I have found that Americans are now far more willing to learn new names, just as they're far more willing to try new ethnic foods... It's like adding a few new spices to the kitchen pantry.” - Firoozeh Dumas

28. “In my time first cousins did not meet like strangers. But we are learning modesty from the Americans, and old English ways are too gross for us.” - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

29. “America is a young dumb country and it needs all kinds of help. America is a dumb puppy with big teeth that bite and hurt. And we take care of America. We hold America to our bosom; we feed America, we make love to America. There wouldn't be an America if it wasn't for black people. So you have some dedicated black Americans who will die a million deaths to save America. And this is home for us. We don't know really about Africa. We talk it in a romantic sense, but America is it. And so, America is always going to be okay as long as black people don't totally lose their mind, cause we'll pick up the pieces and turn it into a new dance.” - Abiodun Oyewole

30. “The law is too important to be left to the lawyers, to paraphrase Georges Clemenceau about war and generals. We laymen know too little about our Constitution and think too superficially about its influence on the qualities of American life. Civic duty requires more.” - David K. Shipler

31. “American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash--all of them--surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.” - John Steinbeck

32. “It may be underfunded and at times mismanaged, but the [Endangered Species] Act is an unprecedented attempt to delegate human-caused extinction to the chapters of history we would rather not revisit: the Slave Trade, the Indian Removal Policy, the subjection of women, child labor, segregation. The Endangered Species Act is a zero-tolerance law: no new extinctions. It keeps eyes on the ground with legal backing-the gun may be in the holster most of the time, but its available if necessary to keep species from disappearing. I discovered in my travels that a law protecting all animals and plants, all of nature, might be as revolutionary-and as American-as the Declaration of Independence.” - Joe Roman

33. “Of all evil-doers, the American is most to be feared; he uses more ingenuity in the planning of his projects, and will take greater risks in carrying them out, than any other malefactor on earth.” - Robert Barr

34. “The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. ----- "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" intro to first full American version 1986” - Anthony Burgess

35. “Second-hand American was spreading over him in patches, like mange or lichen. He was infested, garbled, and I couldn't help him: it would take such time to heal, unearth him, scrape down to where he was true.” - Margaret Atwood

36. “The Pi Betas had accepted the fact that Rose was Mexican, but it was obvious they would just as soon ignore it. And they seemed to assume Rose wanted to do that, too. The other girls might not be overtly disturbed by the fact that Rose was a chicana, but they certainly were not going to encourage her to explore her heritage. No, if Rose joined the Pi Betas, she would have to deny the biggest part of herself. She would have to become completely American.” - Francine Pascal

37. “We Americans... like change. It is at once our weakness and our strength.” - W. Somerset Maugham

38. “...am so deeply impressed with the fair mindedness and tolerance of the American people...” - Virchand Raghavji Gandhi

39. “While you’re alive there’s no time for minor amazements.” - Alice Fulton

40. “A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let's have rage. What's needed is a unified, unifying, Pearl Harbor sort of purple American fury.” - Lance Morrow

41. “There is no happiness like mine.I have been eating poetry.” - Mark Strand

42. “The joke was that President Bush only declared war when Starbucks was hit. You can mess with the U.N. all you want, but when you start interfering with the right to get caffeinated, someone has to pay.” - Chris Kyle

43. “The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want to with us.” - richard wright

44. “Self-centered indulgence, pride and a lack of shame over sin are now emblems of the American lifestyle.” - Billy Graham

45. “In America when someone asks me my nationality, I can't just say American. I have to go back generations, elaborate on there in Europe my ancestors were from. But here, I can just say it, Je suis Americaine. It feels good.” - Bridget Asher

46. “Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.” - Henry Louis Gates Jr.

47. “Country music is the poetry of the American spirit.” - Steve Maraboli