Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician
2012 stump speech, quoted in [2012-1-22, Steyn, Mark, The Man Who Gave Us Newt, National Review, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/288873/man-who-gave-us-newt-mark-steyn, 2012-02-02]
2012
1960, Address at Convention Hall, Philadelphia
Context: I believe in an America where the rights that I have described are enjoyed by all, regardless of their race or their creed or their national origin — where every citizen is free to think and speak as he pleases and write and worship as he pleases — and where every citizen is free to vote as he pleases, without instructions from anyone, his employer, the union leader or his clergyman.
Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician
2012 stump speech, quoted in [2012-1-22, Steyn, Mark, The Man Who Gave Us Newt, National Review, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/288873/man-who-gave-us-newt-mark-steyn, 2012-02-02]
2012
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute”
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America
where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference — and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
1960, Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America
where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind — and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
1960, Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer
in 'Alfred Stieglitz' Photo notes, August 1946, p. 65
From Adams to Stieglitz' (1990)
“I have always believed that for America to succeed, rural America must succeed.”
Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)
Statement by President Joe Biden on the Rural Infrastructure Tour https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/04/11/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-the-rural-infrastructure-tour/ <br class="br">2022, April 2022
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
First Debate with Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates http://www.bartleby.com/251/ of the 1858 campaign for the U.S. Senate, at Ottawa, Illinois (21 August 1858). Lincoln later quoted himself and repeated this statement in his first Inaugural Address (4 March 1861) to emphasize that any acts of secession were over-reactions to his election. During the war which followed his election he eventually declared the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in those states in rebellion against the union, arguably as a war measure rather than as an entirely political or moral initiative. <br class="br">1850s, Lincoln–Douglas debates (1858)
“I believe, and always have, that America must engage — not retreat — in the world.”
Chuck Hagel (1946) United States Secretary of Defense
Transcript: Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/1368, submitted by Robert Naiman on February 1, 2013 at Justforeignpolicy.org, accessed February 10, 2013. <br class="br">2013
“America was the land where people still believed in heroes.”
Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate
Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)
Context: America was the country in which the dynamic myth of the Renaissance — that every man was potentially extraordinary — knew its most passionate persistence. Simply, America was the land where people still believed in heroes.
David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor
Um, I’ll be telling a bunch of them here tonight.
It's Not Funny