“America is history's exception. It began as a republic founded by European migrants. Like the homogenous citizens of most other nations, they were likely on a trajectory to incorporate racial sameness as the mark of citizenship. But the ultimate logic of America's unique Constitution was different. So the United States steadily evolved to define Americans by their shared values, not by their superficial appearance. Eventually, anyone who was willing to give up his prior identity and assume a new American persona became American. The United States has always cherished its "melting pot" ethos of e pluribus unum”

— Victor Davis Hanson

of blending diverse peoples into one through assimilation, integration, and intermarriage...
2010s, America: History's Exception (2016)

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Victor Davis Hanson 41

American military historian, essayist, university professor 1953

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“Americans and Europeans alike sometimes forget how unique is the United States of America. No other nation has been created so swiftly and successfully. No other nation has been built upon an idea – the idea of liberty. No other nation has so successfully combined people of different races and nations within a single culture. Both the founding fathers of the United States and successive waves of immigrants to your country were determined to create a new identity. Whether in flight from persecution or from poverty, the huddled masses have, with few exceptions, welcomed American values, the American way of life and American opportunities. And America herself has bound them to her with powerful bonds of patriotism and pride. The European nations are not and can never be like this. They are the product of history and not of philosophy. You can construct a nation on an idea; but you cannot reconstruct a nation on the basis of one.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech at Hoover Institution Lunch (8 March 1991) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108264
This quote appears to be the basis for the following condensed version, seen on numerous internet sites : Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.
Post-Prime Ministerial

“[T]he United States is history’s exception, not its rule. America is a great, evolving experiment of a constitutional republic in which peoples of all different races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds are equal under the law and see themselves as Americans first and members of tribes second — appearance and religion being incidental rather than essential to the American body politic.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, America: One Nation, Indivisible (2015)

“Americanization is a common citizenship. Does it make any difference what kind of citizenship, and over what road a man travels mentally, spiritually, and economically to citizenship? If every man in America were to be made into a citizen tomorrow by any of the prevailing superficial methods, America basically would be unchanged, and most of the new citizens would not be greatly affected. Would the examination of any ten newly naturalized citizens give a common denominator of Americanization? How can it when several thousand judges who apply the tests vary in their own concept so widely that of two men equally qualified one gets the coveted paper and the other fails? And what of women, who become citizens automatically with their husbands, and who in three of the greatest immigration States in the union have equal citizenship powers? Are we really any nearer Americanization with each new citizen admitted by inadequate naturalization law requirements and through superficial judicial examinations?”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

“European mysticism was not dead at the time the United States of America was founded. The hand of the mysteries controlled in the establishment of the new government for the signature of the mysteries may still be seen on the Great Seal of the United states of America.”

Manly P. Hall (1901–1990) Canadian writer and mystic

Source: The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928), p. xc
Context: European mysticism was not dead at the time the United States of America was founded. The hand of the mysteries controlled in the establishment of the new government for the signature of the mysteries may still be seen on the Great Seal of the United states of America. Careful analysis of the seal discloses a mass of occult and Masonic symbols chief among them, the so-called American Eagle. … the American eagle upon the Great Seal is but a conventionalized phoenix... Not only were many of the founders of the United States government Masons, but they received aid from a secret and august body existing in Europe which helped them to establish this country for a peculiar and particular purpose known only to the initiated few. The Great Seal is the signature of this exalted body —unseen and for the most part unknown — and the unfinished pyramid upon its reverse side is a trestleboard setting forth symbolically the task to the accomplishment of which the United States Government was dedicated from the day of its inception.

“Linking the national identity with race is not unique to the United States. National identity always requires an "other" to define it. But this country has linked its identity with race to an extraordinary degree, matched only by two other settler states: South Africa and Israel.”

Elizabeth Martinez (1925) American community organizer, activist, author, and educator

De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century (2017)

“I am a citizen of the greatest Republic of Mankind. I see the human race united like a huge family by brotherly ties. We have made a sowing of liberty which will, little by little, spring up across the whole world. One day, on the model of the United States of America, a United States of Europe will come into being. The United States will legislate for all its nationalities.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Attributed to Washington in "Farewell to the United States of Europe: long live the EU!" by André Fontaine at Open Democracy (29 November 2001) http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-europefuture/article_344.jsp. It appears to have originally circulated in French:
:: Je suis citoyen de la Grande République de l'Humanité. Je vois le genre humain uni comme une grande famille par des liens fraternels. Nous avons jeté une semence de liberté et d'union qui germera peu à peu dans toute la Terre. Un jour, sur le modèle des Etats-Unis d'Amérique, se constitueront les États-Unis d'Europe. Les États-Unis seront le législateur de toutes les nationalités.
: An anonymous blogger in "Did George Washington predict a "United States of Europe"? (30 January 2010) http://racehist.blogspot.com/2010/01/did-george-washington-predict-united.html showed that it derived from Gustave Rodrigues, Le peuple de l'action: essai sur l'idéalisme américain (A. Colin, 1917), p. 207:
:: Washington écrivait à La Fayette qu'il se condérait comme « citoyen de la grande république de l'humanité » et ajoutait : « Je vois le genre humain uni comme une grande famille par des liens fraternels ». Ailleurs il écrivait, prophétiquement: « Nous avons jeté une semence de liberté et d'union qui germera peu à peu dans toute la terre. Un jour, sur le modèle des Etats-Unis d'Amérique, se constitueront les États-Unis d'Europe. »
: A translation by Louise Seymour Houghton ( The People of Action: An Essay on American Idealism (1918) http://books.google.com/books?id=b8Y9AAAAYAAJ) reads:
:: Washington wrote to Lafayette that he considered himself a "citizen of the great republic of humanity," adding: "I see the human race a great family, united by fraternal bonds." Elsewhere he wrote prophetically: "We have sown a seed of liberty and union that will gradually germinate throughout the earth. Some day, on the model of the United States of America, will be constituted the United States of Europe." [pp. 209-210]
: The first two quotations come from a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette of 15 August 1786 (see above) as quoted in Joseph Fabre's Washington, libérateur de l'Amérique: suivi de Washington et la revolution Américaine (Ch. Delagrave, 1886), and the third is also found in that source where, although placed between quotation marks, it is clearly intended as the author's own comments on what "Washington and his friends" were saying to the world by establishing the American Constitution. Gustave Rodrigues mistakenly printed Fabre's words as Washington's alongside some actual observations of his from a letter to Lafayette, and so created the misquotation.
Misattributed

“Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a problem if Americans were united in standing up for their own country. But in this country itself, there are those who blame America for most of the evils in the world. On the political left, many fault the United States for a history of slavery, and for continuing inequality and racism. Even on the right, traditionally the home of patriotism, we hear influential figures say that America has become so decadent… If these critics are right, then America should be destroyed. And who can dispute some of their particulars? This country did have a history of slavery and racism continues to exist. There is much in our culture that is vulgar and decadent. But the critics are wrong about America, because they are missing the big picture. In their indignation over the sins of America, they ignore what is unique and good about American civilization.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

“Events enlarged his embrace to a wholly new idea of nation — the United States of America.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

"At Large", speech at the Peace Corps twenty-fifth anniversary memorial service (21 September 1986), published in Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 26
Context: nowiki>[George Washington] in uniform patriotism can salute one flag only, embrace but the first circle of life — one's own land and tribe. In war that is necessary, in peace it is not enough. Events enlarged his embrace to a wholly new idea of nation — the United States of America. But less than a century later his descendant by marriage could not slip the more parochial tether. In the halls of the family home standing on the hill above us, General Robert E. Lee paced back and forth as he weighed the offer of Abraham Lincoln to take command of the Union Army on the eve of the Civil War. Lee turned the offer down and that evening took the train to Richmond. His country was still Virginia. We struggle today with the imperative of a new patriotism and citizenship. The Peace Corps has been showing us the way, and the volunteers and staff whom we honor this morning are the vanguard of that journey.

“There is in our political system a government of each of the several States, and a Government of the United States. Each is distinct from the others, and has citizens of its own who owe it allegiance, and whose rights, within its jurisdiction, it must protect. The same person may be at the same time a citizen of the United States and a citizen of a State, but his rights of citizenship under one of those governments will be different from those he has under the other.”

Morrison Waite (1816–1888) American politician

United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875)

“The American settlers came to take and shape the land. The first occupants of the land — the "Indians" whom the European migrants encountered — would not be treated, in the pattern of the Romans, as people to be incorporated into an empire. Instead, they were treated as part of the landscape. Most of them were simply cleared away, like the forest, or pushed back, like the wilderness.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Republic of Technology (1978), p. 38.

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