I was reading George Patton’s famous speech to the third army and this section feels like it could not have been spoken by the general of any other army:
“I don’t want any messages saying ‘I’m holding my position.’ We’re not holding a goddamned thing. We’re advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding anything except the enemy’s balls. We’re going to hold him by his balls and we’re going to kick him in the ass; twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We’re going to go through the enemy like shit through a tinhorn.”
A bit crass, but distinctly American. I’m sure there are some good Twain, MLK, Faulkner, Dubois, Lincoln, etc quotes that are distinctly American, but do you have one that you think fits the bill most strongly?
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“We’ve been looking for the enemy for several days now, we’ve finally found them. We’re surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and killing them.” Attributed to Colonel Lewis B.
This was during the Korean War I think when the Chinese launched a surprised offensive across the River and encircled a lot of our guys but they broke out of it I think.
Give me liberty or give me death.
“Be the American the Japanese think you are” – George Washington
“He was fairly happy, except that, like many people living in Europe, he would rather have been in America.”
Ernest Hemingway, *The Sun Also Rises.*
It’s probably truer today than ever.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
-Mark Twain
Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in this history of mankind.
Mankind — that word should have new meaning for all of us today.
We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore.
We will be united in our common interests.
Perhaps its fate that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution — but from annihilation.
We’re fighting for our right to live, to exist.
And should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice:
“We will not go quietly into the night!
We will not vanish without a fight!
We’re going to live on!
We’re going to survive!”
Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!
-President Thomas J Whitmore
“Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” Theodore Roosevelt on big stick diplomacy
“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Oppenheimer on the atomic bomb.
“To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.
The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Ourthe near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands. There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note. If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours’ term. All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well known American humanity.
The German Commander.”
———
The response: “To the German Commander,
N U T S !
The American Commander” -Brig. Gen. McAuliffe
> Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.
Will Rogers
>Raise Hell and praise Dale!
“Buy one get one free.”
“The chief business of the American people is business.”
– Calvin Coolidge
If you ain’t first, yer last.
– Ricky Bobby’s Dad
“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery” – Thomas Jefferson
“Those willing to give up permanent freedom for temporary safety deserve neither freedom, or safety” – Ben Franklin
The entirety of the Declaration of Independence – Thomas Jefferson
It’s a personal one, but one I love. My grandpa was in the Big Red One during WWII. By the time he was the age most people now graduate college, he had landed in Africa and fought Rommel’s tank corps, landed in Sicily and gone out the other side, and landed in Normandy.
At some point he got wounded, we never figured out when exactly, but we assume it was when he got one of his Bronze stars. He never talked about anything but the funny stuff. But while he was in hospital around Christmas, the Army did a morale drive that asked the family members to send four words to their wounded kin via telegraph.
The message my grandpa received from my great grandma (he found out upon returning it was from his mom, though the rest of the family approved) said, “Get up and fight.”
“We all just wanna be big rockstars and live in hilltop boxes, driving 15 cars. The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap.”
That entire Patton speech is pure fucking gold.
At this point it’s the motto on New Hampshire’s stupid flag.
“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.” – Rowdy Roddy Piper
Give me liberty, or give me death!
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” – Benjamin Franklin
“We choose to go to the Moon… We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”
John F Kennedy
I’ll give you a long form quote in video form
https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd–UO0
“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
-James Baldwin
[If we don’t know what we’re doing, the enemy certainly can’t anticipate our future actions](https://i.imgur.com/i0T99R8.jpg)
“This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.” – Lt. Commander Robert W. Copeland – Commander of Samuel B. Roberts – Battle off Samar
If you know the battle off samar, then you know how badass the USS Johnson and USS Samuel B. Roberts are
“Only in America” – Don King.
Well, to quote Bill Hicks quoting Jack Palance in “Shane” –
I’m so sick of arming the world and then sending troops over to destroy the fucking arms, you know what I mean? We keep arming these little countries, then we go and blow the shit out of them. We’re like the bullies of the world, you know.
We’re like Jack Palance in the movie Shane, throwing the pistol at the sheep herder’s feet: “Pick it up.”
“I don’t wanna pick it up mister, you’ll shoot me.”
“Pick up the gun.”
“Mister, I don’t want no trouble, huh. I just came down town here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don’t even know what gingham is, but she goes through about 10 rolls a week of that stuff. I ain’t looking for no trouble, mister.”
“Pick up the gun.”
BOOM BOOM
“You all saw him. He had a gun.”
I have not yet begun to fight- John Paul Jones
“America…just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.” – Dr. Hunter S Thompson.
*”We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”*
*—* George Kennan.
“Gentlemen, it is better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football.”
John Heisman
Come and take it
Live Free or Die
If you don’t like your job, you don’t strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way. – Homer J. Simpson
“They have us surrounded again, the poor bastards.”
Lt. Col. Creighton Abrams, Somewhere in France, 1944 (allegedly)
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is intelligence
“I never said, ‘The superman exists and he’s American.’ What I said was ‘God exists and he’s American.'”
That may be so, but I know a place where the constitution doesn’t mean squat!
*cuts to the Supreme Court*
-Futurama
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“It’s a sad day for American capitalism when a man can’t fly a midget on a kite over Central Park.”. — Jim Moran, promoter
Edit: believe it or not, I did not make this up. This is a real thing a guy said to newspaper reporters when NYC police shut down his promotional stunt which entailed…exactly what it sounds like. Flying a small person on a kite.
God bless America. 🇺🇸
“America represents something universal in the human spirit. I received a letter not long ago from a man who said, ‘You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won’t become a German or a Turk.’ But then he added, ‘Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.'”
​
As much as I dislike and disagree with Ronald Reagan and think he was a turning point in the wrong direction for America, I can’t think of a better way to describe one of things that more aptly describes why I love my country. Doesn’t matter where you’re from, when you are here you are one of us.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” ~ Declaration of Independence