“In half a lifetime, many Americans have seen their God dethroned, their heroes defiled, their culture polluted, their values assaulted, their country invaded, and themselves demonized as extremists and bigots for holding on to beliefs Americans have held for generations.”

Letter to Lord de Grey (27 September 1865), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 581.
1860s

Dennis Prager. Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph https://books.google.com/books?id=aAFSQWdwexEC, 2012.
2010s

Statement in conversation (7 January 1942)
Disputed, Hitler's Table Talks (1941-1944) (published 1953)

" America's History of Fear http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/opinion/05kristof.html", New York Times, 4 September 2010

Richard Dawkins on militant atheism http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism.html, (February 2002)

Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi Reacts to the Murder of Four Americans in Al-Fallujah: 'How could you punish an entire people because four corpses were mutilated?' http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/31.htm April 2004.

Address to New York Cultural League (6 May 1969)

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 12 : The West, Civilizations, and Civilization, § 2 : The West In The World, p. 310
Context: Cultural and civilizational diversity challenges the Western and particularly American belief in the universal relevance of Western culture. This belief is expressed both descriptively and normatively. Descriptively it holds that peoples in all societies want to adopt Western values, institutions, and practices. If they seem not to have that desire and to be committed to their own traditional cultures, they are victims of a “false consciousness” comparable to that which Marxists found among proletarians who supported capitalism. Normatively the Western universalist belief posits that people throughout the world should embrace Western values, institutions, and culture because they embody the highest, most enlightened, most liberal, most rational, most modern, and most civilized thinking of humankind.
In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous. … The belief that non-Western peoples should adopt Western values, institutions, and culture is immoral because of what would be necessary to bring it about. The almost-universal reach of European power in the late nineteenth century and the global dominance of the United States in the late twentieth century spread much of Western civilization across the world. European globalism, however, is no more. American hegemony is receding if only because it is no longer needed to protect the United States against a Cold War-style Soviet military threat. Culture, as we have argued, follows power. If non-Western societies are once again to be shaped by Western culture, it will happen only as a result of the expansion, deployment, and impact of Western power. Imperialism is the necessary logical consequence of universalism. In addition, as a maturing civilization, the West no longer has the economic or demographic dynamism required to impose its will on other societies and any effort to do so is also contrary to the Western values of self-determination and democracy. As Asian and Muslim civilizations begin more and more to assert the universal relevance of their cultures, Westerners will come to appreciate more and more the connection between universalism and imperialism.

Speech delivered at Wisconsin Capitol in Madison (5 March 2011)
Claim found to be "true" by PolitiFact and others.
2011
Source: [Moore, Michael, America Is Not Broke, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/america-is-not-broke_b_832006.html, 6 March 2011, Huffington Post, 11 August 2013]
Source: [Kertscher, Tom, Borowski, Greg, The Truth-O-Meter Says: True - Michael Moore says 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined, http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/mar/10/michael-moore/michael-moore-says-400-americans-have-more-wealth-/, 10 March 2011, PolitiFact, 11 August 2013]
Source: [Moore, Michael, Michael Moore, The Forbes 400 vs. Everybody Else, http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/forbes-400-vs-everybody-else, March 7, 2011, michaelmoore.com http://www.michaelmoore.com/, yes, 2011-03-09, 2014-08-28, http://web.archive.org/web/20110309211959/http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/forbes-400-vs-everybody-else]
Source: [Pepitone, Julianne, Forbes 400: The super-rich get richer, http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/22/news/companies/forbes_400/index.htm, 22 September 2010, CNN, 11 August 2013]
Source: [Johnson, Dave, 9 Pictures That Expose This Country's Obscene Division of Wealth, http://www.alternet.org/story/149918/9_pictures_that_expose_this_country%27s_obscene_division_of_wealth, 14 February 2011, Alternet, 11 August 2013]